heurevshurtConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#346
“heure” frequency rank
#47,383
“hurt” frequency rank
47729
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heure hurt
Definition Unité de mesure du temps, compatible avec le Système international, dérivée de la seconde, dont le symbole est h. 1 heure = 60 minutes = 3600 secondes. Blesser, endolorir, faire du mal.

Where the eye mixes heure and hurt

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

5 ch
heure
4 ch
hurt

Look-alike desk: heure vs hurt

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: heure is ^((h muet))\œʁ\ while hurt is \ˈhɝt\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47729, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heure is recorded at frequency rank #346, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h muet))\œʁ\. 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 47729, this pair ranks #184,610 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of heure vs hurt

Shared letters: hru. Private to "heure": e. Private to "hurt": t.

"heure" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "hurt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heure ← ehure · herue · heuer · heurre · hheure · huere
  • hurt ← hhurt · hrut · hurrt · hurtt · hutr · uhrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "heure" and "hurt" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heure" is a noun and "hurt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "heure" or "hurt" show up more?
"heure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #346 in our French list, against #47,383 for "hurt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "heure" 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 #184,610 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heure" 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 #184,610 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