Hail or hale?
hail is a noun meaning “Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a…”; hale is a verb meaning “To drag or pull, especially forcibly”. Use hail as a noun and hale as a verb (hail is also a verb: “To have hailstones fall from the sky”). They sound the same (/heɪl/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) hail is about 2.1 times as common as hale.
What is the difference between hail and hale?
| hail | hale | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb, adjective, interjection | adjective, noun, verb |
| Meaning | Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm An occurrence of this type of precipitation; a hailstorm To have hailstones fall from the sky | To drag or pull, especially forcibly |
| Example | They say it's going to hail tomorrow | none recorded |
| Forms | hails | hales, haling, haled |
| Pronunciation | /heɪl/ [heɪ̯ɫ] [heːɫ] | /heɪl/ |
| In writing | 8.3 times per million words | 4.0 times per million words |
Sources: hail and hale in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of hail and hale
hail
- 1
Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm
- 2
To have hailstones fall from the sky
They say it's going to hail tomorrow
- 3
To greet; give salutation to; salute
- 4
An occurrence of this type of precipitation; a hailstorm
- 5
To send or release hail
The cloud would hail down furiously within a few minutes
- 6
To name; to designate; to call
He was hailed as a hero
- 7
A rapid, intense barrage by a large number of projectiles or other objects
- 8
To pour down in rapid succession
hale
- 1
datedSound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired
- 2
To drag or pull, especially forcibly
- 3
Acronym of high-altitude long-endurance
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, hail or hale?
hail appears 8.3 times per million words; hale 4.0 times per million words.
hail 8.3 times per million wordshale 4.0 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search hail vs hale?
“hail vs hale” is searched about 720 times a month on Google and 30 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“hale vs hail”, “hail or hale”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.