hidevshoeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: hide is a verb, hoe is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hide” is a verb and “hoe” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,794
“hide” frequency rank
#20,954
“hoe” frequency rank
23748
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hide hoe
Definition To put (something) in a place where it will be out of sight or harder to discover. Any of various tools for scraping, scratching, digging, or stirring soil or other materials.

Where the eye mixes hide and hoe

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

4 ch
hide
3 ch
hoe

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hide is /haɪd/ while hoe is /həʊ/. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23748, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hide is recorded at frequency rank #2,794, classified as averb, pronounced /haɪd/. hoe is at rank #20,954, tagged as anoun, pronounced /həʊ/.

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 23748, this pair ranks #407,052 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hide vs hoe

Shared letters: eh. Private to "hide": di. Private to "hoe": o.

"hide" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hoe" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hidehdie · hhide · hidde · hied · ihde

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hide" and "hoe" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hide" is a verb and "hoe" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "hide" or "hoe"?
"hide" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,794 in our English list, against #20,954 for "hoe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list