English homophones
hertz/hurts
"hertz" is a noun; "hurts" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "hertz" arrives as a noun, while "hurts" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "hertz" is 5 letters, "hurts" is 5; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across hertz, hurts: hrt. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
hertz
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCCC
Inventory ehrtz · private ez
hurts
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCCC
Inventory hrstu · private su
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "hertz" when you mean: In the International System of Units, the derived unit of frequency; one (period or cycle of any periodic event) per second.
- Write "hurts" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of hurt
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (hertz, hurts). Here's where to go from here.
- "hurts" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,309 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: he'd · heed. Nearby cluster
- Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.