VossvsvoyTell them apart

Quick tell: Voss is a name, voy is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Voss” is a name and “voy” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,682
“Voss” frequency rank
#48,860
“voy” frequency rank
96542
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Voss voy
Definition Nom de famille. Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif du verbe irrégulier ir (« aller »).

Letter map: Voss vs voy

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

4 ch
Voss
3 ch
voy

Role in the sentence - Voss and voy

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Voss is aname and voyaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 96542, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Voss is recorded at frequency rank #47,682, classified as aname. voy is at rank #48,860, tagged as averb, pronounced \ˈboj\.

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 96542, this pair ranks #632 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Voss vs voy

Shared letters: ov. Private to "Voss": s. Private to "voy": y.

"Voss" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "voy" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Voss ← ovss · vsos · vvoss

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Voss" for "voy" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Voss" is a name and "voy" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Voss" or "voy" show up more?
"Voss" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47,682 in our French list, against #48,860 for "voy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Voss" vs "voy" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Voss" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "voy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #632 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Voss" and "voy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "viv vs voy". 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 #632 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