hurt
/hɜːt/
"hurt" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hurt” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,224 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #1,224
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To cause (a person or animal) physical pain and/or injury.
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 | hurt |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /hɜːt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,224 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hurt” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hurt is 4 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hɜːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,224 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for hurt, with forms such as "hhurt", "hrut", and "hurrt". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hut", "Hus", "Huw", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hurten, hirten, hertan (“to injure, scathe, knock together”), from Old Northern French hurter ("to ram into, strike, collide with"; > Modern French heurter), perhaps from Frankish *hūrt (“a battering ram”), cognate with Welsh hwrdd (“ram… The correct English form is hurt, spelled H-U-R-T.
Definition
- 1To cause (a person or animal) physical pain and/or injury.
- 2To cause (somebody) emotional pain.
- 3To be painful.
- 4To damage, harm, impair, undermine, impede.
Etymology
From Middle English hurten, hirten, hertan (“to injure, scathe, knock together”), from Old Northern French hurter ("to ram into, strike, collide with"; > Modern French heurter), perhaps from Frankish *hūrt (“a battering ram”), cognate with Welsh hwrdd (“ram”) and Cornish hordh (“ram”). Compare Proto-Germanic *hrūtaną, *hreutaną (“to fall, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *krew- (“to fall, beat, smash, strike, break”); however, the earliest instances of the verb in Middle English are as old as those found in Old French, which leads to the possibility that the Middle English word may instead be a reflex of an unrecorded Old English *hyrtan, which later merged with the Old French verb. Germanic cognates include Dutch horten (“to push against, strike”), Middle Low German hurten (“to run at, collide with”), Middle High German hurten (“to push, bump, attack, storm, invade”), Old Norse hrútr (“battering ram”). Alternate etymology traces Old Northern French hurter rather to Old Norse hrútr (“ram (male sheep)”), lengthened-grade variant of hjǫrtr (“stag”), from Proto-Germanic *herutuz, *herutaz (“hart, male deer”), which would relate it to English hart (“male deer”). See hart.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhurt,hrut,hurrt,hurtt,hutr,uhrt
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of hurt - 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “hurt”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-U-R-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /hɜːt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “hut” - see the side-by-side comparison. hurt vs hut
- 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.