hillvshitTell them apart

Which to use

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

#8,252
“hill” frequency rank
#14,695
“hit” frequency rank
22947
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hill hit
Definition Colline. Tube.

Where the eye mixes hill and hit

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
hill
3 ch
hit

Look-alike desk: hill vs hit

A purely visual mix-up. hill (\hɪl\) and hit (^((h aspiré))\it\) 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 22947, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hill is recorded at frequency rank #8,252, classified as anoun, pronounced \hɪl\. hit is at rank #14,695, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\it\.

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 22947, this pair ranks #355,222 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hill vs hit

Shared letters: hi. Private to "hill": l. Private to "hit": t.

"hill" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hit" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hillhhill · hil · hlil · ihll

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hill" and "hit" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\hɪl\ versus ^((h aspiré))\it\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "hill" vs "hit" - which ranks higher?
"hill" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,252 in our French list, against #14,695 for "hit". 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 "hill" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #355,222 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hill" and "hit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hae vs hit". 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 #355,222 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