holevshomeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#2,206
“hole” frequency rank
#149
“home” frequency rank
2355
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hole home
Definition A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure. A dwelling.

Where the eye mixes hole and home

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
hole
4 ch
home

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. hole (/həʊl/) and home (/həʊm/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - l in “hole” becomes m in “home”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2355, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hole is recorded at frequency rank #2,206, classified as anoun, pronounced /həʊl/. home is at rank #149, tagged as anoun, pronounced /həʊm/.

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 2355, this pair ranks #525,191 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hole vs home

Shared letters: eho. Private to "hole": l. Private to "home": m.

"hole" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "home" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • holehhole · hloe · hoel · holle · ohle
  • homehhome · hmoe · hoem · ohme

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hole" and "home" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/həʊl/ versus /həʊm/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "hole" or "home"?
"home" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #149 in our English list, against #2,206 for "hole". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list