hardvshavreWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#7,330
“hard” frequency rank
#6,093
“havre” frequency rank
13423
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hard havre
Definition Pornographique. ou Port de mer, naturel ou artificiel, fermé et sûr.

Where the eye mixes hard and havre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. hard runs 4 letters (CVCC) against havre's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
hard
5 ch
havre

Why the eye confuses hard with havre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hard is \aʁd\ while havre is ^((h aspiré))\avʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13423, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hard is recorded at frequency rank #7,330, classified as anadj, pronounced \aʁd\. havre is at rank #6,093, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\avʁ\.

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 13423, this pair ranks #401,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hard vs havre

Shared letters: ahr. Private to "hard": d. Private to "havre": ev.

"hard" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "havre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hardahrd · hadr · hardd · harrd · hhard · hrad
  • havreahvre · harve · haver · havrre · havvre · hhavre · hvare

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hard" and "havre" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hard" is an adjective and "havre" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "hard" or "havre"?
"havre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,093 in our French list, against #7,330 for "hard". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "hard" and "havre" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hard" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "havre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #401,099 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hard" and "havre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hard vs hash". 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 #401,099 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list