hidevshôteWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#47,373
“hide” frequency rank
#6,098
“hôte” frequency rank
53471
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hide hôte
Definition Cuir, peau (des animaux vivants). Celui qui donne l’hospitalité par humanité, par amitié, par bienveillance.

Where the eye mixes hide and hôte

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

4 ch
hide
4 ch
hôte

Visual trap between hide and hôte

A purely visual mix-up. hide (\haɪd\) and hôte (^((h muet))\ot\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53471, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hide is recorded at frequency rank #47,373, classified as anoun, pronounced \haɪd\. hôte is at rank #6,098, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h muet))\ot\.

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 53471, this pair ranks #140,505 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hide vs hôte

Shared letters: eh. Private to "hide": di. Private to "hôte": tô.

"hide" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hôte" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hide ← hdie · hhide · hidde · hied · ihde

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hide" and "hôte" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\haɪd\ versus ^((h muet))\ot\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "hide" or "hôte"?
"hôte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,098 in our French list, against #47,373 for "hide". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "hide" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hôte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #140,505 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hide" and "hôte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hedge vs hide". 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 #140,505 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