hervshotWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: her is a determiner, hot is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“her” is a determiner and “hot” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#58
“her” frequency rank
#711
“hot” frequency rank
769
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature her hot
Definition Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc). Relating to heat and conditions which produce it.

Where the eye mixes her and hot

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch
her
3 ch
hot

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: her is /ˈhɜː/ while hot is /hɒt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 769, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

her is recorded at frequency rank #58, classified as adet, pronounced /ˈhɜː/. hot is at rank #711, tagged as anadj, pronounced /hɒt/.

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 769, this pair ranks #528,820 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of her vs hot

Shared letters: h. Private to "her": er. Private to "hot": ot.

"her" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "hot" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "her" and "hot" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "her" is a determiner and "hot" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "her" or "hot"?
"her" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #58 in our English list, against #711 for "hot". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list