Which to use
“halting” is an adjective and “hinting” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #27,864
- “halting” frequency rank
- #25,410
- “hinting” frequency rank
- 53274
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | halting | hinting |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Prone to pauses or breaks; hesitant; broken. | The act of giving a hint or suggestion. |
Letter map: halting vs hinting
Shared letters muted; letters that set halting and hinting apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.
Part-of-speech tell for halting / hinting
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: halting is anadjective and hintinganoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53274, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
halting is recorded at frequency rank #27,864, classified as anadj. hinting is at rank #25,410, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈhɪntɪŋ/.
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 53274, this pair ranks #150,303 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of halting vs hinting
Shared letters: ghint. Private to "halting": al. Private to "hinting": -.
"halting" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "hinting" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "halting" for "hinting" ever safe?
Which is more common, "halting" or "hinting"?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "halting" and "hinting".
- Full dictionary entry for "halting" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "hinting" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #150,303 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "halting" and "hinting" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hinting vs hoisting". 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 #150,303 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.