him vs hl, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“him” is a pronoun and “hl” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,118
“him” frequency rank: #5,964
“hl” frequency rank: 21082
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	him	hl
Definition	Personalpronomen 3. Person Maskulinum Singular Objektform: ihm, ihn	Hektoliter (= 100 Liter)

Letter map: him vs hl

Shared letters muted; letters that set him and hl apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

him

2 ch

Role in the sentence - him and hl

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: him is apronoun and hlanabbrev. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21082, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

him is recorded at frequency rank #15,118, classified as apron, pronounced [hɪm]. hl is at rank #5,964, tagged as anabbrev.

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 21082, this pair ranks #1,890,363 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of him vs hl

Shared letters: h. Private to "him": im. Private to "hl": l.

"him" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "hl" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "him" and "hl" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "him" is a pronoun and "hl" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "him" or "hl" show up more?

"hl" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,964 in our German list, against #15,118 for "him". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "him" and "hl".

Full dictionary entry for "him" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "hl" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,890,363 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"him" and "hl" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "him vs höh". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,890,363 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.