HessvsHusTell them apart

Which to use

“Hess” and “Hus” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#23,298
“Hess” frequency rank
#42,702
“Hus” frequency rank
66000
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Hess Hus
Definition A habitational surname from German of German and Ashkenazi origin, denoting a person from Hesse. A surname from Czech, notably borne by Jan Hus, a Czech religious reformer.

Letter map: Hess vs Hus

Shared letters muted; letters that set Hess and Hus apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
Hess
3 ch
Hus

Spelling & dictionary notes on Hess vs Hus

Hess and Hus are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66000, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Hess is recorded at frequency rank #23,298, classified as aname, pronounced /hɛs/. Hus is at rank #42,702, tagged as aname.

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 66000, this pair ranks #70,097 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Hess vs Hus

Shared letters: hs. Private to "Hess": e. Private to "Hus": u.

"Hess" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Hus" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Hessehss · hhess · hses

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Hess" and "Hus" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "Hess" vs "Hus" - which ranks higher?
"Hess" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,298 in our English list, against #42,702 for "Hus". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Hess" and "Hus".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Hess" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Hus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,097 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Hess" and "Hus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "humps vs Hus". 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 #70,097 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list