hourvshouveWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: hour is a noun, houve is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hour” is a noun and “houve” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,099
“hour” frequency rank
#672
“houve” frequency rank
13771
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hour houve
Definition hora primeira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo haver

Letter map: hour vs houve

Shared letters muted; letters that set hour and houve apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. hour runs 4 letters (CVVC) against houve's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
hour
5 ch
houve

Part-of-speech tell for hour / houve

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hour is anoun and houveaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13771, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hour is recorded at frequency rank #13,099, classified as anoun, pronounced /aʊr/. houve is at rank #672, tagged as averb.

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 13771, this pair ranks #58,459 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hour vs houve

Shared letters: hou. Private to "hour": r. Private to "houve": ev.

"hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "houve" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hour ← hhour · horu · hourr · huor · ohur
  • houve ← hhouve · houev · houvve · hovue · huove · ohuve

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "hour" and "houve" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hour" is a noun and "houve" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "hour" vs "houve" - which ranks higher?
"houve" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #672 in our Portuguese list, against #13,099 for "hour". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "hour" and "houve". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "houve" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #58,459 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hour" and "houve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hour vs hui". 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 #58,459 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