haresvsharmWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“hares” and “harm” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#37,482
“hares” frequency rank
#3,169
“harm” frequency rank
40651
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hares harm
Definition plural of hare Physical injury; hurt; damage.

Where the eye mixes hares and harm

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
hares
4 ch
harm

Look-alike desk: hares vs harm

A purely visual mix-up. hares (/hɛɚz/) and harm (/hɑːm/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40651, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hares is recorded at frequency rank #37,482, classified as anoun, pronounced /hɛɚz/. harm is at rank #3,169, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hɑːm/.

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 40651, this pair ranks #265,587 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hares vs harm

Shared letters: ahr. Private to "hares": es. Private to "harm": m.

"hares" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "harm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • haresahres · haress · harres · harse · hhares · hraes
  • harmahrm · hamr · harmm · harrm · hharm · hram

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hares" and "harm" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/hɛɚz/ versus /hɑːm/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "hares" or "harm"?
"harm" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,169 in our English list, against #37,482 for "hares". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hares" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "harm" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #265,587 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hares" and "harm" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hares vs Hoare". 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 #265,587 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