heartvsHobartWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: heart is a noun, Hobart is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“heart” is a noun and “Hobart” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#491
“heart” frequency rank
#16,488
“Hobart” frequency rank
16979
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heart Hobart
Definition A muscular organ that pumps blood through the body, traditionally thought to be the seat of emotion. The capital city of Tasmania, Australia, named for a Lord Hobart.

Where the eye mixes heart and Hobart

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. heart runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against Hobart's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
heart
6 ch
Hobart

Visual trap between heart and Hobart

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: heart is /hɑːt/ while Hobart is /ˈhəʊbɑːt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16979, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heart is recorded at frequency rank #491, classified as anoun, pronounced /hɑːt/. Hobart is at rank #16,488, tagged as aname, pronounced /ˈhəʊbɑːt/.

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 16979, this pair ranks #454,379 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of heart vs Hobart

Shared letters: ahrt. Private to "heart": e. Private to "Hobart": bo.

"heart" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "Hobart" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heart ← ehart · haert · hearrt · heartt · heatr · hheart
  • Hobart ← hboart · hhobart · hoabrt · hobarrt · hobartt · hobatr · hobbart · hobrat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "heart" for "Hobart" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heart" is a noun and "Hobart" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "heart" vs "Hobart" - which ranks higher?
"heart" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #491 in our English list, against #16,488 for "Hobart". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "heart" and "Hobart" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "heart" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Hobart" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #454,379 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heart" and "Hobart" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Hoare vs Hobart". 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 #454,379 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