hisvsHsiConfusable pair

Quick tell: his is a determiner, Hsi is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“his” is a determiner and “Hsi” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34
“his” frequency rank
#47,104
“Hsi” frequency rank
47138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature his Hsi
Definition Belonging to him. A surname.

Letter map: his vs Hsi

Shared letters muted; letters that set his and Hsi apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
his
3 ch
Hsi

Part-of-speech tell for his / Hsi

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: his is adeterminer and Hsianame. On the page they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (is ↔ si) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

his is recorded at frequency rank #34, classified as adet, pronounced /ɪ̈z/. Hsi is at rank #47,104, 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 47138, this pair ranks #205,229 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of his vs Hsi

Shared letters: his. Private to "his": -. Private to "Hsi": -.

"his" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "Hsi" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "his" and "Hsi" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "his" is a determiner and "Hsi" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "his" vs "Hsi" - which ranks higher?
"his" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34 in our English list, against #47,104 for "Hsi". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "his" and "Hsi". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "his" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Hsi" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #205,229 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "his" and "Hsi" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "HIIT vs Hsi". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #205,229 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