housevshuskWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“house” and “husk” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#186
“house” frequency rank
#35,345
“husk” frequency rank
35531
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature house husk
Definition A structure built or serving as an abode of human beings. The dry, leafy or stringy exterior of certain vegetables or fruits, which must be removed before eating the meat inside.

Where the eye mixes house and husk

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
house
4 ch
husk

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. house (/haʊs/) and husk (/hʌsk/) 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 35531, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

house is recorded at frequency rank #186, classified as anoun, pronounced /haʊs/. husk is at rank #35,345, tagged as anoun, pronounced /hʌsk/.

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 35531, this pair ranks #311,148 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of house vs husk

Shared letters: hsu. Private to "house": eo. Private to "husk": k.

"house" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "husk" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • househhouse · hosue · houes · housse · huose · ohuse
  • huskhhusk · hsuk · huks · huskk · hussk · uhsk

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "house" and "husk" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/haʊs/ versus /hʌsk/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "house" or "husk"?
"house" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #186 in our English list, against #35,345 for "husk". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list