# held vs hen

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### held
*verb · IPA /ˈhɛld/ · frequency rank #572*
simple past and past participle of hold

### hen
*noun · IPA /hɛn/ · frequency rank #13,733*
A female chicken (Gallus gallus), especially a sexually mature one kept for her eggs.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-09-03.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/held-vs-hen