harmvshauTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#46,723
“harm” frequency rank
#7,064
“hau” frequency rank
53787
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature harm hau
Definition körperlicher oder geistiger Schaden 2. Person Singular Präsens Imperativ Aktiv des Verbs hauen

Letter map: harm vs hau

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

4 ch
harm
3 ch
hau

Role in the sentence - harm and hau

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: harm is anoun and hauaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53787, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

harm is recorded at frequency rank #46,723, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. hau is at rank #7,064, tagged as averb, pronounced [haʊ̯].

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 53787, this pair ranks #1,044,248 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of harm vs hau

Shared letters: ah. Private to "harm": mr. Private to "hau": u.

"harm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hau" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "harm" and "hau" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "harm" is a noun and "hau" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "harm" vs "hau" - which ranks higher?
"hau" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,064 in our German list, against #46,723 for "harm". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "harm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hau" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,044,248 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "harm" and "hau" 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 #1,044,248 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