hastevshazeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#17,853
“haste” frequency rank
#16,723
“haze” frequency rank
34576
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature haste haze
Definition Speed; swiftness; dispatch. Very fine solid particles (smoke, dust) or liquid droplets (moisture) suspended in the air, slightly limiting visibility. (Compare fog, mist.)

Where the eye mixes haste and haze

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

5 ch
haste
4 ch
haze

Visual trap between haste and haze

A purely visual mix-up. haste (/heɪst/) and haze (/heɪz/) 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 34576, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

haste is recorded at frequency rank #17,853, classified as anoun, pronounced /heɪst/. haze is at rank #16,723, tagged as anoun, pronounced /heɪz/.

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 34576, this pair ranks #319,598 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of haste vs haze

Shared letters: aeh. Private to "haste": st. Private to "haze": z.

"haste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "haze" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hasteahste · haset · hasste · hastte · hhaste · hsate
  • hazeahze · haez · hazze · hhaze · hzae

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "haste" for "haze" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/heɪst/ versus /heɪz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "haste" or "haze" show up more?
"haze" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,723 in our English list, against #17,853 for "haste". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "haste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "haze" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #319,598 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "haste" and "haze" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hasta vs haste". 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 #319,598 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