Which to use
“head” and “hen” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #288
- “head” frequency rank
- #13,733
- “hen” frequency rank
- 14021
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | head | hen |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth, and main sense organs. | A female chicken (Gallus gallus), especially a sexually mature one kept for her eggs. |
Where the eye mixes head and hen
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. head (/ˈhɛd/) and hen (/hɛn/) 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 14021, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
head is recorded at frequency rank #288, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈhɛd/. hen is at rank #13,733, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hɛn/.
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 14021, this pair ranks #472,512 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of head vs hen
Shared letters: eh. Private to "head": ad. Private to "hen": n.
"head" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "hen" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- head ← ehad · haed · headd · heda · hhead