Which to use
“hemming” is a noun and “humming” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #48,277
- “hemming” frequency rank
- #21,542
- “humming” frequency rank
- 69819
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hemming | humming |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The act of saying "hem", in intermission or hesitation of speech. | present participle and gerund of hum |
Letter map: hemming vs humming
Shared letters muted; letters that set hemming and humming apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. hemming and humming follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for hemming / humming
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hemming is anoun and hummingaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - e in “hemming” becomes u in “humming”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69819, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hemming is recorded at frequency rank #48,277, classified as anoun. humming is at rank #21,542, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈhʌmɪŋ/.
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 69819, this pair ranks #53,011 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of hemming vs humming
Shared letters: ghimn. Private to "hemming": e. Private to "humming": u.
"hemming" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "humming" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "hemming" for "humming" ever safe?
Which is more common, "hemming" or "humming"?
What to do next
Pair "hemming" vs "humming" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "hemming" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "humming" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #53,011 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "hemming" and "humming" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heaping vs hemming". 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 #53,011 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.