his vs hm, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#34
“his” frequency rank: #9,346
“hm” frequency rank: 9380
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	his	hm
Definition	Belonging to him.	Initialism of how much.

Letter map: his vs hm

Shared letters muted; letters that set his and hm apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

his

2 ch

Pair insight - his / hm

his and hm 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 9380, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

his is recorded at frequency rank #34, classified as adet, pronounced /ɪ̈z/. hm is at rank #9,346, tagged as adet.

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 9380, this pair ranks #497,686 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of his vs hm

Shared letters: h. Private to "his": is. Private to "hm": m.

"his" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "hm" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "his" for "hm" ever safe?

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.

In ordinary English text, does "his" or "hm" show up more?

"his" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34 in our English list, against #9,346 for "hm". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "his" vs "hm" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "his" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "hm" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #497,686 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"his" and "hm" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hm vs HRW". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #497,686 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.