Which to use
“harm” is a noun and “herb” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #46,723
- “harm” frequency rank
- #22,757
- “herb” frequency rank
- 69480
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | harm | herb |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | körperlicher oder geistiger Schaden | in der Nähe von bitter, das Gegenteil von süßlich |
Letter map: harm vs herb
Shared letters muted; letters that set harm and herb apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. harm and herb follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for harm / herb
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: harm is anoun and herbanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69480, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
harm is recorded at frequency rank #46,723, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. herb is at rank #22,757, tagged as anadj, pronounced [hɛʁp].
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 69480, this pair ranks #475,293 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of harm vs herb
Shared letters: hr. Private to "harm": am. Private to "herb": be.
"harm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "herb" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "harm" for "herb" ever safe?
Frequency check: "harm" vs "herb" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
You've compared "harm" and "herb". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "harm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "herb" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #475,293 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "harm" and "herb" 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 #475,293 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.