Which to use
“healed” and “heave” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #11,896
- “healed” frequency rank
- #32,841
- “heave” frequency rank
- 44737
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | healed | heave |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of heal | To lift with difficulty; to raise with some effort; to lift (a heavy thing). |
Where the eye mixes healed and heave
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. healed runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against heave's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: healed vs heave
A purely visual mix-up. healed (/hiːld/) and heave (/hiːv/) 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 44737, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
healed is recorded at frequency rank #11,896, classified as averb, pronounced /hiːld/. heave is at rank #32,841, tagged as averb, pronounced /hiːv/.
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 44737, this pair ranks #227,831 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of healed vs heave
Shared letters: aeh. Private to "healed": dl. Private to "heave": v.
"healed" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC · "heave" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "healed" and "heave" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "healed" or "heave" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "healed" and "heave" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "healed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "heave" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #227,831 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "healed" and "heave" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heave 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 #227,831 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.