Which to use
“horn” and “hour” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,689
- “horn” frequency rank
- #675
- “hour” frequency rank
- 6364
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | horn | hour |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A hard growth of keratin that protrudes from the top of the head of certain animals, usually paired. | A unit of time of one twenty-fourth of a day (sixty minutes). |
Where the eye mixes horn and hour
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. horn (/hɔːn/) 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 6364, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
horn is recorded at frequency rank #5,689, classified as anoun, pronounced /hɔːn/. 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 6364, this pair ranks #511,721 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of horn vs hour
Shared letters: hor. Private to "horn": n. Private to "hour": u.
"horn" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC