her
/ˈhɜː/
"her" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“her” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #58 in English word frequency and used as a determiner.
- #58
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc).
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | her |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Determiner |
| IPA | /ˈhɜː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #58 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “her” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for her is 3 letters long, classified as a determiner, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈhɜː/. Corpus data places it at rank #58 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for her in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hi", "ho", "HR", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English here, hir, hire, from Old English hire (“her”), from Proto-Germanic *hezōi (dative and genitive singular of *hijō). Cognate with North Frisian hör, Saterland Frisian hier, hiere (“her”), West Frisian har (“her”), Dutch haar (“her”), Germ… The correct English form is her, spelled H-E-R.
Definition
- 1Belonging to her (belonging to that female person or animal, or in poetic or old-fashioned language that ship, city, season, etc).
- 2Belonging to a person of unspecified gender (to counterbalance the traditional "his" in this sense).
Etymology
From Middle English here, hir, hire, from Old English hire (“her”), from Proto-Germanic *hezōi (dative and genitive singular of *hijō). Cognate with North Frisian hör, Saterland Frisian hier, hiere (“her”), West Frisian har (“her”), Dutch haar (“her”), German Low German hör (“her”), German ihr (“her”).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “her”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈhɜː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “hi” - see the side-by-side comparison. her vs hi
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.