Which to use
“hood” and “hour” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,051
- “hood” frequency rank
- #675
- “hour” frequency rank
- 5726
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hood | hour |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A covering for the head, usually attached to a larger garment such as a jacket or cloak. | A unit of time of one twenty-fourth of a day (sixty minutes). |
Where the eye mixes hood and hour
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. hood (/hʊd/) and hour (/aʊə/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5726, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hood is recorded at frequency rank #5,051, classified as anoun, pronounced /hʊd/. hour is at rank #675, tagged as anoun, pronounced /aʊə/.
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 5726, this pair ranks #514,227 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of hood vs hour
Shared letters: ho. Private to "hood": d. Private to "hour": ru.
"hood" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC