hinvshocWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: hin is a adverb, hoc is an unknown, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hin” is an adverb and “hoc” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#327
“hin” frequency rank
#17,937
“hoc” frequency rank
18264
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hin hoc
Definition drückt die Richtung zu einer bestimmten Stelle oder einem Zeitpunkt aus Nominativ Singular Neutrum des Pronomens hic

Letter map: hin vs hoc

Shared letters muted; letters that set hin and hoc apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
hin
3 ch
hoc

Part-of-speech tell for hin / hoc

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hin is anadverb and hocanunknown. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18264, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hin is recorded at frequency rank #327, classified as anadv, pronounced [hɪn]. hoc is at rank #17,937, tagged as anunknown, 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 18264, this pair ranks #1,919,883 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hin vs hoc

Shared letters: h. Private to "hin": in. Private to "hoc": co.

"hin" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "hoc" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hin" and "hoc" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hin" is an adverb and "hoc" an unknown, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "hin" or "hoc" show up more?
"hin" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #327 in our German list, against #17,937 for "hoc". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "hin" and "hoc".

  • Full dictionary entry for "hin" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hoc" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,919,883 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hin" and "hoc" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hoc vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,919,883 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