heilvshipTell them apart

Quick tell: heil is a verb, hip is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“heil” is a verb and “hip” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,882
“heil” frequency rank
#3,237
“hip” frequency rank
42119
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heil hip
Definition To greet with a Sieg Heil. The outward-projecting parts of the pelvis and top of the femur and the overlying tissue.

Where the eye mixes heil and hip

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
heil
3 ch
hip

Look-alike desk: heil vs hip

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: heil is /haɪl/ while hip is /hɪp/. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42119, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heil is recorded at frequency rank #38,882, classified as averb, pronounced /haɪl/. hip is at rank #3,237, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hɪp/.

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 42119, this pair ranks #252,138 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of heil vs hip

Shared letters: hi. Private to "heil": el. Private to "hip": p.

"heil" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "hip" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heilehil · heill · hheil · hiel

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "heil" for "hip" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heil" is a verb and "hip" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "heil" or "hip"?
"hip" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,237 in our English list, against #38,882 for "heil". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "heil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hip" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #252,138 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heil" and "hip" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heil vs HIIT". 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 #252,138 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