Which to use
“held” is a verb and “her” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #572
- “held” frequency rank
- #58
- “her” frequency rank
- 630
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | held | her |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of hold | 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 held and her
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: held vs her
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: held is /ˈhɛld/ 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 (verb vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 630, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
held is recorded at frequency rank #572, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈhɛld/. 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 630, this pair ranks #529,085 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of held vs her
Shared letters: eh. Private to "held": dl. Private to "her": r.
"held" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "her" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- held ← ehld · hedl · heldd · helld · hheld · hled
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "held" and "her" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "held" vs "her" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "held" 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 #529,085 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "held" and "her" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "her vs Herat". 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 #529,085 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.