foi
/ˈfoj/
The verdict
“foi” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #26) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #26
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 853
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - terceira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo ser
Corpus desk
Index PT-foi · foi · Portuguese
foi · rank #26 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #26
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 853
- PHOTO-FINISH mas
Nearest frequency peer: mas (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “foi”
Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo
- mais
mais
99,978 corpus weight
- dos
dos
99,977 corpus weight
- mas
mas
99,976 corpus weight
- foi
foi
99,975 corpus weight
- ao
ao
99,974 corpus weight
- me
me
99,973 corpus weight
What this shows As barras situam “foi” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | foi |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈfoj/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #26 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “foi”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for foi is neighbouring look-alikes ("for", "fui", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced /ˈfoj/. Frequency #26 among 853 “F” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for foi, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "for", "fui", "foz", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct Portuguese form is foi, spelled F-O-I.
Definition
- 1terceira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo ser
- 2terceira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo ir
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "foi", not the corpus desk frequency band.