himvshmmWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: him is a pronoun, hmm is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“him” is a pronoun and “hmm” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,888
“him” frequency rank
#10,171
“hmm” frequency rank
33059
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature him hmm
Definition Pronom de la troisième personne du singulier masculin accusatif. Le, lui. Variante de hum, hm, exprime l’hésitation.

Letter map: him vs hmm

Shared letters muted; letters that set him and hmm apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
him
3 ch
hmm

Part-of-speech tell for him / hmm

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: him is apronoun and hmmanintj. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “him” becomes m in “hmm”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33059, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

him is recorded at frequency rank #22,888, classified as apron, pronounced \hɪm\. hmm is at rank #10,171, tagged as anintj.

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 33059, this pair ranks #293,109 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of him vs hmm

Shared letters: hm. Private to "him": i. Private to "hmm": -.

"him" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "hmm" · 3 letters · shape CCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "him" for "hmm" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "him" is a pronoun and "hmm" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "him" vs "hmm" - which ranks higher?
"hmm" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,171 in our French list, against #22,888 for "him". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "him" and "hmm".

  • Full dictionary entry for "him" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hmm" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #293,109 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "him" and "hmm" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hae vs him". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #293,109 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