HintonvshintsWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Hinton is a name, hints is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Hinton” is a name and “hints” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,337
“Hinton” frequency rank
#8,944
“hints” frequency rank
44281
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Hinton hints
Definition A suburb of Newcastle in the Port Stephens council area, New South Wales, Australia. plural of hint

Letter map: Hinton vs hints

Shared letters muted; letters that set Hinton and hints apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
Hinton
5 ch
hints

Role in the sentence - Hinton and hints

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Hinton is aname and hintsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44281, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Hinton is recorded at frequency rank #35,337, classified as aname. hints is at rank #8,944, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hɪnts/.

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 44281, this pair ranks #232,081 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Hinton vs hints

Shared letters: hint. Private to "Hinton": o. Private to "hints": s.

"Hinton" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "hints" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Hintonhhinton · hinnton · hinotn · hintno · hintonn · hintton · hitnon · hniton
  • hintshhints · hinnts · hinst · hintss · hintts · hitns · hnits · ihnts

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Hinton" for "hints" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Hinton" is a name and "hints" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Hinton" vs "hints" - which ranks higher?
"hints" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,944 in our English list, against #35,337 for "Hinton". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Hinton" and "hints".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Hinton" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hints" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #232,081 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Hinton" and "hints" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Hinton vs Holton". 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 #232,081 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