Which to use
“ham” is a noun and “hammy” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #5,885
- “ham” frequency rank
- #49,963
- “hammy” frequency rank
- 55848
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ham | hammy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The region back of the knee joint; the popliteal space; the hock. | Resembling or characteristic of ham. |
Letter map: ham vs hammy
Shared letters muted; letters that set ham and hammy apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Part-of-speech tell for ham / hammy
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ham is anoun and hammyanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ham” sits inside “hammy”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55848, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ham is recorded at frequency rank #5,885, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈhæm/. hammy is at rank #49,963, tagged as anadj.
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 55848, this pair ranks #130,520 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of ham vs hammy
Shared letters: ahm. Private to "ham": -. Private to "hammy": y.
"ham" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "hammy" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- hammy ← ahmmy · hammyy · hamy · hamym · hhammy · hmamy
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ham" and "hammy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "ham" or "hammy"?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ham" and "hammy".
- Full dictionary entry for "ham" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "hammy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #130,520 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ham" and "hammy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hammam vs hammy". 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 #130,520 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.