hill
/hɪl/
"hill" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hill” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,603) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,603
- frequency rank, English
- 23,837
- “H” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An elevated landmass smaller than a mountain.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hill · hill · English
hill · rank #1,603 · 4 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,603
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 4 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 23,837
- PHOTO-FINISH hearing
Nearest frequency peer: hearing (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “hill”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- fund
fund
98,401 corpus weight
- generation
generation
98,400 corpus weight
- hearing
hearing
98,399 corpus weight
- hill
hill
98,398 corpus weight
- jack
jack
98,397 corpus weight
- larger
larger
98,396 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “hill” sits against the nearest ranked English headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | hill |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,603 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hill” sits in English frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for hill is neighbouring look-alikes ("his", "him", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /hɪl/. Frequency #1,603 among 23,837 “H” headwords. 6 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for hill, with forms such as "hhill", "hil", and "hlil". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "his", "him", "hit", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hil (“hill”), from Old English hyll (“hill”), from Proto-Germanic *hulliz (“hill”), from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥Hnís (“top, hill, rock”) (compare also Proto-Germanic *halluz (“stone, rock”)). Cognate with Middle Dutch hille, hulle (“hil… The correct English form is hill, spelled H-I-L-L.
Definition
- 1An elevated landmass smaller than a mountain.
- 2A sloping road.
- 3A heap of earth surrounding a plant.
- 4A single cluster or group of plants growing close together, and having the earth heaped up about them.
- 5The pitcher’s mound.
- 6The raised portion of the surface of a vinyl record.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hill appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The park is sheltered from the wind by a hill to the east.
So this was my future home, I thought![…]Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.
Etymology
From Middle English hil (“hill”), from Old English hyll (“hill”), from Proto-Germanic *hulliz (“hill”), from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥Hnís (“top, hill, rock”) (compare also Proto-Germanic *halluz (“stone, rock”)). Cognate with Middle Dutch hille, hulle (“hill”), Low German hull (“hill”), Faroese hólur (“hill”), Icelandic and Old Norse hóll (“hill”), Norn hul (“hillock”), Norwegian hol (“low hillock”), Swedish kulle (“hill”), Catalan coll (“hill”), Italian colle (“hill”), Latin collis (“hill”), Lithuanian kalnas (“hill, mountain”), Albanian kallumë (“big pile, tall heap”), Russian холм (xolm, “hill”), Old English holm (“rising land, island”). More at holm.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- hhill
- hil
- hlil
- ihll
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of hill - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of May 6, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "hill", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
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.