harevshavenTell them apart

Which to use

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

#36,876
“hare” frequency rank
#27,088
“haven” frequency rank
63964
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hare haven
Definition Variante de hart. Refuge, abri.

Where the eye mixes hare and haven

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

4 ch
hare
5 ch
haven

Visual trap between hare and haven

A purely visual mix-up. hare (\aʁ\) and haven (\ˈheɪ.vən\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63964, 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\. haven is at rank #27,088, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈheɪ.vən\.

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 63964, this pair ranks #79,337 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of hare vs haven

Shared letters: aeh. Private to "hare": r. Private to "haven": nv.

"hare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "haven" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hareahre · haer · harre · hhare · hrae
  • havenahven · haevn · havenn · havne · havven · hhaven · hvaen

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hare" and "haven" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\aʁ\ versus \ˈheɪ.vən\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "hare" or "haven"?
"haven" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,088 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.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "haven" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #79,337 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hare" and "haven" 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 #79,337 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