dearvsdíasWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: dear is a adjective, días is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#39,148
“dear” frequency rank
#158
“días” frequency rank
39306
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dear días
Definition Querido. Forma del plural de día.

Where the eye mixes dear and días

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

4 ch
dear
4 ch
días

Look-alike desk: dear vs días

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dear is /dɪə/ while días is [ˈd̪ias]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39306, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dear is recorded at frequency rank #39,148, classified as anadj, pronounced /dɪə/. días is at rank #158, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈd̪ias].

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 39306, this pair ranks #165,266 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dear vs días

Shared letters: ad. Private to "dear": er. Private to "días": .

"dear" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "días" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dearddear · dearr · dera · edar

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dear" and "días" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dear" is an adjective and "días" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "dear" vs "días" - which ranks higher?
"días" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #158 in our Spanish list, against #39,148 for "dear". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "días" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #165,266 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dear" and "días" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dear vs Deva". 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 #165,266 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list