Which to use
“home” and “hum” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #149
- “home” frequency rank
- #13,172
- “hum” frequency rank
- 13321
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | home | hum |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A dwelling. | A hummed tune, i.e. created orally with lips closed. |
Where the eye mixes home and hum
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. home (/həʊm/) and hum (/ˈhʌm/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13321, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
home is recorded at frequency rank #149, classified as anoun, pronounced /həʊm/. hum is at rank #13,172, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈhʌm/.
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 13321, this pair ranks #476,495 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of home vs hum
Shared letters: hm. Private to "home": eo. Private to "hum": u.
"home" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "hum" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- home ← hhome · hmoe · hoem · ohme