holedvshuedWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: holed is a verb, hued is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“holed” is a verb and “hued” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,497
“holed” frequency rank
#47,105
“hued” frequency rank
74602
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature holed hued
Definition simple past and past participle of hole Colored; having a hue.

Letter map: holed vs hued

Shared letters muted; letters that set holed and hued apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. holed runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against hued's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
holed
4 ch
hued

Part-of-speech tell for holed / hued

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: holed is averb and huedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74602, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

holed is recorded at frequency rank #27,497, classified as averb, pronounced /hoʊld/. hued is at rank #47,105, tagged as anadj.

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 74602, this pair ranks #35,833 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of holed vs hued

Shared letters: deh. Private to "holed": lo. Private to "hued": u.

"holed" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "hued" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • holed ← hholed · hloed · hoeld · holde · holedd · holled · ohled
  • hued ← heud · hhued · hude · huedd · uhed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "holed" for "hued" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "holed" is a verb and "hued" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "holed" vs "hued" - which ranks higher?
"holed" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,497 in our English list, against #47,105 for "hued". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "holed" vs "hued" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "holed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hued" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,833 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "holed" and "hued" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hod vs hued". 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 #35,833 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