HerrvshurtWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Herr is a noun, hurt is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Herr” is a noun and “hurt” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#32,434
“Herr” frequency rank
#47,383
“hurt” frequency rank
79817
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Herr hurt
Definition Monsieur, appellation permettant de s’adresser de façon polie à un homme, normalement suivi par son nom de famille ou son titre. Blesser, endolorir, faire du mal.

Where the eye mixes Herr and hurt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. Herr and hurt follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
Herr
4 ch
hurt

Why the eye confuses Herr with hurt

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Herr is \hɛʁ\ while hurt is \ˈhɝt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79817, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Herr is recorded at frequency rank #32,434, classified as anoun, pronounced \hɛʁ\. hurt is at rank #47,383, tagged as averb, pronounced \ˈhɝt\.

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 79817, this pair ranks #22,417 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Herr vs hurt

Shared letters: hr. Private to "Herr": e. Private to "hurt": tu.

"Herr" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hurt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Herr ← ehrr · hherr · hrer
  • hurt ← hhurt · hrut · hurrt · hurtt · hutr · uhrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Herr" and "hurt" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Herr" is a noun and "hurt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Herr" or "hurt" show up more?
"Herr" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,434 in our French list, against #47,383 for "hurt". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Herr" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hurt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,417 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Herr" and "hurt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heurt vs hurt". 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 #22,417 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