heavsheilWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#44,248
“hea” frequency rank
#38,882
“heil” frequency rank
83130
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hea heil
Definition Alternative spelling of hea'. To greet with a Sieg Heil.

Letter map: hea vs heil

Shared letters muted; letters that set hea and heil apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. hea runs 3 letters (CVV) against heil's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
hea
4 ch
heil

Part-of-speech tell for hea / heil

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hea is anoun and heilaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83130, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hea is recorded at frequency rank #44,248, classified as anoun. heil is at rank #38,882, tagged as averb, pronounced /haɪl/.

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 83130, this pair ranks #14,405 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of hea vs heil

Shared letters: eh. Private to "hea": a. Private to "heil": il.

"hea" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "heil" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heil ← ehil · heill · hheil · hiel

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "hea" for "heil" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hea" is a noun and "heil" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "hea" vs "heil" - which ranks higher?
"heil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,882 in our English list, against #44,248 for "hea". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "hea" vs "heil" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hea" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "heil" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,405 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hea" and "heil" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hea vs Herat". 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 #14,405 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