Heroin or heroine?
heroin is a noun meaning “A powerful and addictive drug derived from opium producing intense euphoria…”; heroine is a noun meaning “A female hero”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) heroin is about 2.5 times as common as heroine.
What is the difference between heroin and heroine?
| heroin | heroine | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun, adjective |
| Meaning | A powerful and addictive drug derived from opium producing intense euphoria, classed as an illegal narcotic in most of the world | A female hero A female lead character |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | heroins | heroines |
| Pronunciation | /ˈhɛɹoʊ.ɪn/ /hɛəɹoʊ.ɪn/ | /ˈhɪɹoʊɪn/ /hiro.ɪn/ /ˈhɛɹəʊɪn/ |
| In writing | 8.3 times per million words | 3.4 times per million words |
Sources: heroin and heroine in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of heroin and heroine
heroin
- 1
A powerful and addictive drug derived from opium producing intense euphoria, classed as an illegal narcotic in most of the world
heroine
- 1
A female hero
- 2
A female lead character
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, heroin or heroine?
heroin appears 8.3 times per million words; heroine 3.4 times per million words.
heroin 8.3 times per million wordsheroine 3.4 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search heroin vs heroine?
“heroin vs heroine” is searched about 20 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.