Which to use
“hour” is a noun and “Hu” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #675
- “hour” frequency rank
- #13,362
- “Hu” frequency rank
- 14037
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hour | Hu |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A unit of time of one twenty-fourth of a day (sixty minutes). | A common surname from Chinese of east Asian derivation. |
Where the eye mixes hour and Hu
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hour is /aʊə/ while Hu is /hu/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14037, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hour is recorded at frequency rank #675, classified as anoun, pronounced /aʊə/. Hu is at rank #13,362, tagged as aname, pronounced /hu/.
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 14037, this pair ranks #472,424 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of hour vs Hu
Shared letters: hu. Private to "hour": or. Private to "Hu": -.
"hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "Hu" · 2 letters · shape CV
Known mistypes of this pair
- hour ← hhour · horu · hourr · huor · ohur