hardvsharryConfusable pair

Quick tell: hard is a adjective, harry is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hard” is an adjective and “harry” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,386
“hard” frequency rank
#3,258
“harry” frequency rank
11644
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hard harry
Definition hart, fest [wiederholt] belästigen, bedrängen, quälen, stressen

Letter map: hard vs harry

Shared letters muted; letters that set hard and harry apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. hard runs 4 letters (CVCC) against harry's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
hard
5 ch
harry

Grammar separator: hard vs harry

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hard is anadjective and harryaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11644, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hard is recorded at frequency rank #8,386, classified as anadj, pronounced [hɑː(ɹ)d]. harry is at rank #3,258, tagged as averb, pronounced […].

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 11644, this pair ranks #1,968,719 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hard vs harry

Shared letters: ahr. Private to "hard": d. Private to "harry": y.

"hard" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "harry" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hardahrd · hadr · hardd · harrd · hhard · hrad
  • harryahrry · harryy · hary · haryr · hharry · hrary

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hard" and "harry" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hard" is an adjective and "harry" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "hard" or "harry"?
"harry" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,258 in our German list, against #8,386 for "hard". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "hard" and "harry".

  • Full dictionary entry for "hard" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "harry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,968,719 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hard" and "harry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hard vs haze". 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 #1,968,719 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list