harevshaveConfusable pair

Which to use

“hare” and “have” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#36,876
“hare” frequency rank
#9,020
“have” frequency rank
45896
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hare have
Definition Variante de hart. Petite éminence qui, sur le panneton d’une clé bénarde, empêche celle-ci de traverser la serrure.

Where the eye mixes hare and have

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

4 ch
hare
4 ch
have

Visual trap between hare and have

A purely visual mix-up. hare (\aʁ\) and have (^((h aspiré))\av\) 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 a single letter - r in “hare” becomes v in “have”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45896, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hare is recorded at frequency rank #36,876, classified as anoun, pronounced \aʁ\. have is at rank #9,020, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\av\.

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 45896, this pair ranks #199,211 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hare vs have

Shared letters: aeh. Private to "hare": r. Private to "have": v.

"hare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "have" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hareahre · haer · harre · hhare · hrae
  • haveahve · haev · havve · hhave · hvae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hare" and "have" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\aʁ\ versus ^((h aspiré))\av\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "hare" or "have"?
"have" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,020 in our French list, against #36,876 for "hare". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "hare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "have" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #199,211 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hare" and "have" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hare vs Hatem". 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 #199,211 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