HarmanvsharmedWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Harman is a name, harmed is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Harman” is a name and “harmed” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,782
“Harman” frequency rank
#15,422
“harmed” frequency rank
41204
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Harman harmed
Definition A surname. simple past and past participle of harm

Letter map: Harman vs harmed

Shared letters muted; letters that set Harman and harmed apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. Harman and harmed follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
Harman
6 ch
harmed

Part-of-speech tell for Harman / harmed

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Harman is aname and harmedaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41204, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Harman is recorded at frequency rank #25,782, classified as aname. harmed is at rank #15,422, tagged as averb, pronounced /hɑɹmd/.

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 41204, this pair ranks #260,599 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Harman vs harmed

Shared letters: ahmr. Private to "Harman": n. Private to "harmed": de.

"Harman" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "harmed" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Harman ← ahrman · hamran · haramn · harmann · harmman · harmna · harrman · hharman
  • harmed ← ahrmed · hamred · haremd · harmde · harmedd · harmmed · harrmed · hharmed

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Harman" and "harmed" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Harman" is a name and "harmed" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Harman" or "harmed" show up more?
"harmed" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,422 in our English list, against #25,782 for "Harman". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Harman" and "harmed".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Harman" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "harmed" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #260,599 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Harman" and "harmed" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hammam vs Harman". 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 #260,599 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