herevshurtWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#111
“here” frequency rank
#1,224
“hurt” frequency rank
1335
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature here hurt
Definition In, on, or at this place (a place perceived to be close to the speaker); compare there. To cause (a person or animal) physical pain and/or injury.

Where the eye mixes here and hurt

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

4 ch
here
4 ch
hurt

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: here is /hɪə̯/ while hurt is /hɜːt/. 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 (adverb vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1335, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

here is recorded at frequency rank #111, classified as anadv, pronounced /hɪə̯/. 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 1335, this pair ranks #527,628 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of here vs hurt

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

"here" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hurt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hereehre · heer · herre · hhere · hree
  • hurthhurt · hrut · hurrt · hurtt · hutr · uhrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "here" and "hurt" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "here" is an adverb and "hurt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "here" or "hurt"?
"here" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #111 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list