HandvshardTell them apart

Which to use

“Hand” and “hard” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#13,761
“Hand” frequency rank
#7,418
“hard” frequency rank
21179
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Hand hard
Definition mão condição de atuação difícil, dura

Letter map: Hand vs hard

Shared letters muted; letters that set Hand and hard apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
Hand
4 ch
hard

Pair insight - Hand / hard

Hand and hard are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - n in “Hand” becomes r in “hard”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21179, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Hand is recorded at frequency rank #13,761, classified as anoun, pronounced /hant/. hard is at rank #7,418, tagged as anoun.

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 21179, this pair ranks #49,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Hand vs hard

Shared letters: adh. Private to "Hand": n. Private to "hard": r.

"Hand" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "hard" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Handahnd · hadn · handd · hannd · hhand · hnad
  • hardahrd · hadr · hardd · harrd · hhard · hrad

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Hand" for "hard" ever safe?
No. They differ by a single letter - n in “Hand” becomes r in “hard”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "Hand" vs "hard" - which ranks higher?
"hard" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,418 in our Portuguese list, against #13,761 for "Hand". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Hand" vs "hard" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Hand" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hard" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Hand" and "hard" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Hand vs hani". 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 #49,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list