Which to use
“heel” is a noun and “her” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #9,052
- “heel” frequency rank
- #58
- “her” frequency rank
- 9110
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | heel | her |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The rear part of the foot, where it joins the leg. | Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc). |
Where the eye mixes heel and her
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: heel is /hiːl/ while her is /ˈhɜː/. 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 determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9110, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
heel is recorded at frequency rank #9,052, classified as anoun, pronounced /hiːl/. her is at rank #58, tagged as adet, pronounced /ˈhɜː/.
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 9110, this pair ranks #499,042 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of heel vs her
Shared letters: eh. Private to "heel": l. Private to "her": r.
"heel" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "her" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- heel ← ehel · heell · hele · hheel
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "heel" and "her" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "heel" or "her"?
What to do next
You've compared "heel" and "her". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "heel" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "her" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #499,042 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "heel" and "her" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heel vs hued". 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
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.