harevshavTell them apart

Quick tell: hare is a noun, hav is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hare” is a noun and “hav” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,895
“hare” frequency rank
#34,516
“hav” frequency rank
46411
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hare hav
Definition Any of several plant-eating mammals of the genus Lepus, similar to a rabbit, but larger and with longer ears. Informal spelling of have.

Letter map: hare vs hav

Shared letters muted; letters that set hare and hav apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
hare
3 ch
hav

Grammar separator: hare vs hav

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hare is anoun and havaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46411, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hare is recorded at frequency rank #11,895, classified as anoun, pronounced /hɛə/. hav is at rank #34,516, tagged as averb.

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 46411, this pair ranks #211,992 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hare vs hav

Shared letters: ah. Private to "hare": er. Private to "hav": v.

"hare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hav" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hareahre · harre · hhare · hrae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hare" and "hav" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hare" is a noun and "hav" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "hare" or "hav" show up more?
"hare" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,895 in our English list, against #34,516 for "hav". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "hare" and "hav". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hav" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #211,992 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hare" and "hav" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hav vs HRW". 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 #211,992 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