handvshuedWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: hand is a noun, hued is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hand” is a noun and “hued” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#375
“hand” frequency rank
#47,105
“hued” frequency rank
47480
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hand hued
Definition The part of the forelimb below the forearm or wrist in a human, and the corresponding part in many other animals. Colored; having a hue.

Letter map: hand vs hued

Shared letters muted; letters that set hand and hued apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. hand (CVCC) and hued (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
hand
4 ch
hued

Role in the sentence - hand and hued

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hand is anoun and huedanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47480, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hand is recorded at frequency rank #375, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈhænd/. hued is at rank #47,105, 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 47480, this pair ranks #202,041 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hand vs hued

Shared letters: dh. Private to "hand": an. Private to "hued": eu.

"hand" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hued" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hand ← ahnd · hadn · handd · hannd · hhand · hnad
  • hued ← heud · hhued · hude · huedd · uhed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "hand" for "hued" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hand" is a noun and "hued" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "hand" or "hued" show up more?
"hand" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #375 in our English list, against #47,105 for "hued". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "hand" and "hued". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hand" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hued" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #202,041 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hand" and "hued" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hod vs hued". 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 #202,041 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list