losevsloyWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“lose” and “loy” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#34,601
“lose” frequency rank
#44,027
“loy” frequency rank
78628
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lose loy
Definition Variante de lauze. Ancienne variante orthographique de loi.

Letter map: lose vs loy

Shared letters muted; letters that set lose and loy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. lose runs 4 letters (CVCV) against loy's 3 (CVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
lose
3 ch
loy

Pair insight - lose / loy

lose and loy are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78628, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lose is recorded at frequency rank #34,601, classified as anoun. loy is at rank #44,027, tagged as anoun, pronounced \lwa\.

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 78628, this pair ranks #25,253 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of lose vs loy

Shared letters: lo. Private to "lose": es. Private to "loy": y.

"lose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "loy" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lose ← llose · loes · losse · lsoe · olse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "lose" and "loy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "lose" vs "loy" - which ranks higher?
"lose" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,601 in our French list, against #44,027 for "loy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "lose" and "loy".

  • Full dictionary entry for "lose" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "loy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,253 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lose" and "loy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lobo vs loy". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #25,253 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list