Which to use
“hour” and “hue” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #675
- “hour” frequency rank
- #15,190
- “hue” frequency rank
- 15865
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hour | hue |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A unit of time of one twenty-fourth of a day (sixty minutes). | A color, or shade of color; tint; dye. |
Where the eye mixes hour and hue
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. hour (/aʊə/) and hue (/hjuː/) 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 15865, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hour is recorded at frequency rank #675, classified as anoun, pronounced /aʊə/. hue is at rank #15,190, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hjuː/.
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 15865, this pair ranks #461,312 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of hour vs hue
Shared letters: hu. Private to "hour": or. Private to "hue": e.
"hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "hue" · 3 letters · shape CVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- hour ← hhour · horu · hourr · huor · ohur