hertzvsheurtéTell them apart

Quick tell: hertz is a noun, heurté is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#38,836
“hertz” frequency rank
#18,501
“heurté” frequency rank
57337
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hertz heurté
Definition Unité de fréquence permettant de mesurer le nombre de fois où un événement cyclique survient par seconde et dont le symbole est Hz. Qualifie un dessin où l’artiste a négligé de fondre les teintes avec soin et d’adoucir les contours, mais qui est large et vigoureux.

Where the eye mixes hertz and heurté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. hertz runs 5 letters (CVCCC) against heurté's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
hertz
6 ch
heurté

Look-alike desk: hertz vs heurté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hertz is ^((h aspiré))\ɛʁts\ while heurté is ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57337, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hertz is recorded at frequency rank #38,836, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\ɛʁts\. heurté is at rank #18,501, tagged as anadj, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\œʁ.te\.

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 57337, this pair ranks #115,660 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hertz vs heurté

Shared letters: ehrt. Private to "hertz": z. Private to "heurté": ué.

"hertz" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "heurté" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hertz ← ehrtz · herrtz · herttz · hertzz · herzt · hetrz · hhertz · hretz

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hertz" and "heurté" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hertz" is a noun and "heurté" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "hertz" or "heurté" show up more?
"heurté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,501 in our French list, against #38,836 for "hertz". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "hertz" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "heurté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #115,660 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hertz" and "heurté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hertz vs heurt". 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 #115,660 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