harmvshatWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: harm is a noun, hat is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“harm” is a noun and “hat” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,723
“harm” frequency rank
#33
“hat” frequency rank
46756
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature harm hat
Definition körperlicher oder geistiger Schaden 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs haben

Letter map: harm vs hat

Shared letters muted; letters that set harm and hat apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
harm
3 ch
hat

Role in the sentence - harm and hat

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: harm is anoun and hataverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46756, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

harm is recorded at frequency rank #46,723, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. hat is at rank #33, tagged as averb, pronounced [hat].

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 46756, this pair ranks #1,308,126 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of harm vs hat

Shared letters: ah. Private to "harm": mr. Private to "hat": t.

"harm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hat" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • harmahrm · hamr · harmm · harrm · hharm · hram

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "harm" for "hat" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "harm" is a noun and "hat" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "harm" or "hat" show up more?
"hat" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33 in our German list, against #46,723 for "harm". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "harm" and "hat". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "harm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hat" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,308,126 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "harm" and "hat" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "harm vs puzzles". 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 #1,308,126 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