lo vs lui, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“lo” is a noun and “lui” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,119
“lo” frequency rank: #68
“lui” frequency rank: 8187
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	lo	lui
Definition	Année.	Pronom clitique de la troisième personne du singulier épicène du complément d’objet indirect.

Where the eye mixes lo and lui

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

2 ch

3 ch

lui

Look-alike desk: lo vs lui

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: lo is \lo\ while lui is \lɥi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8187, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lo is recorded at frequency rank #8,119, classified as anoun, pronounced \lo\. lui is at rank #68, tagged as apron, pronounced \lɥi\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 8187, this pair ranks #420,848 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of lo vs lui

Shared letters: l. Private to "lo": o. Private to "lui": iu.

"lo" · 2 letters · shape CV · "lui" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lo" for "lui" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lo" is a noun and "lui" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary French text, does "lo" or "lui" show up more?

"lui" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #68 in our French list, against #8,119 for "lo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

Full dictionary entry for "lo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lui" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #420,848 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"lo" and "lui" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lo vs lobo". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #420,848 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.