heatvshurtWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: heat is a noun, hurt is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#24,027
“heat” frequency rank
#23,362
“hurt” frequency rank
47389
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature heat hurt
Definition calor machucado, ferido

Letter map: heat vs hurt

Shared letters muted; letters that set heat and hurt apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. heat (CVVC) and hurt (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
heat
4 ch
hurt

Role in the sentence - heat and hurt

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: heat is anoun and hurtanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47389, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

heat is recorded at frequency rank #24,027, classified as anoun. hurt is at rank #23,362, tagged as anadj, pronounced /hɜːt/.

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 47389, this pair ranks #17,869 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of heat vs hurt

Shared letters: ht. Private to "heat": ae. Private to "hurt": ru.

"heat" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "hurt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • heat ← ehat · heatt · heta · hheat
  • hurt ← hhurt · hrut · hurrt · hurtt · hutr · uhrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "heat" for "hurt" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "heat" is a noun and "hurt" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "heat" or "hurt" show up more?
"hurt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,362 in our Portuguese list, against #24,027 for "heat". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "heat" and "hurt". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "heat" 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 #17,869 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "heat" and "hurt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hui 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 #17,869 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