hourlyvshurleyConfusable pair

Quick tell: hourly is a adjective, hurley is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hourly” is an adjective and “hurley” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,043
“hourly” frequency rank
#19,108
“hurley” frequency rank
30151
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hourly hurley
Definition Occurring every hour. A stick used in the game of hurling.

Letter map: hourly vs hurley

Shared letters muted; letters that set hourly and hurley apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch
hourly
6 ch
hurley

Part-of-speech tell for hourly / hurley

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hourly is anadjective and hurleyanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30151, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hourly is recorded at frequency rank #11,043, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈaʊ̯əli/. hurley is at rank #19,108, tagged as anoun.

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 30151, this pair ranks #356,951 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hourly vs hurley

Shared letters: hlruy. Private to "hourly": o. Private to "hurley": e.

"hourly" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "hurley" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hourlyhhourly · horuly · houlry · hourlly · hourlyy · hourrly · houryl · huorly
  • hurleyhhurley · hruley · hulrey · hurely · hurleyy · hurlley · hurlye · hurrley

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hourly" and "hurley" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hourly" is an adjective and "hurley" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "hourly" vs "hurley" - which ranks higher?
"hourly" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,043 in our English list, against #19,108 for "hurley". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "hourly" and "hurley". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hourly" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hurley" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #356,951 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hourly" and "hurley" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Hervey vs hurley". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #356,951 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list