hervshurtWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: her is a determiner, hurt is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#58
“her” frequency rank
#1,224
“hurt” frequency rank
1282
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature her hurt
Definition Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc). To cause (a person or animal) physical pain and/or injury.

Where the eye mixes her and hurt

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

3 ch
her
4 ch
hurt

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: her is /ˈhɜː/ while hurt is /hɜːt/. 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 (determiner vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1282, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

her is recorded at frequency rank #58, classified as adet, pronounced /ˈhɜː/. hurt is at rank #1,224, tagged as averb, pronounced /hɜːt/.

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 1282, this pair ranks #527,729 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of her vs hurt

Shared letters: hr. Private to "her": e. Private to "hurt": tu.

"her" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "hurt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hurthhurt · hrut · hurrt · hurtt · hutr · uhrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "her" and "hurt" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "her" is a determiner and "hurt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "her" or "hurt"?
"her" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #58 in our English list, against #1,224 for "hurt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "her" and "hurt". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "her" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hurt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #527,729 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "her" and "hurt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "HIIT vs hurt". 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list