Which to use
“hed” is a noun and “hewn” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #44,253
- “hed” frequency rank
- #43,189
- “hewn” frequency rank
- 87442
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hed | hewn |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The headline of a news story. | Made or crafted by cutting, whittling down. |
Letter map: hed vs hewn
Shared letters muted; letters that set hed and hewn apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. hed runs 3 letters (CVC) against hewn's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for hed / hewn
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hed is anoun and hewnanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 87442, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hed is recorded at frequency rank #44,253, classified as anoun. hewn is at rank #43,189, tagged as anadj, pronounced /hjuːn/.
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 87442, this pair ranks #7,572 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of hed vs hewn
Shared letters: eh. Private to "hed": d. Private to "hewn": nw.
"hed" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "hewn" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- hewn ← ehwn · henw · hewnn · hewwn · hhewn
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "hed" for "hewn" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "hed" or "hewn" show up more?
After this comparison
You've compared "hed" and "hewn". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "hed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "hewn" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #7,572 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "hed" and "hewn" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hed vs HRW". 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 #7,572 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.