dem
/deːm/
The verdict
“dem” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #7,268) as an article. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #7,268
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 1,193
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - o, ao, do, artigo definido masculino do caso dativo singular
Corpus desk
Index PT-dem · dem · Portuguese
dem · rank #7,268 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #7,268
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,193
- PHOTO-FINISH death
Nearest frequency peer: death (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “dem”
Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo
- confusa
confusa
92,739 corpus weight
- coro
coro
92,737 corpus weight
- corporação
corporação
92,736 corpus weight
- death
death
92,734 corpus weight
- dem
dem
92,733 corpus weight
- desaparecido
desaparecido
92,732 corpus weight
What this shows As barras situam “dem” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dem |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Article |
| IPA | /deːm/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #7,268 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “dem”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for dem is neighbouring look-alikes ("do", "DJ", …), not just typos; it is anarticle pronounced /deːm/. Frequency #7,268 among 1,193 “D” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
dem has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "do", "DJ", "du", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is dem, spelled D-E-M.
Definition
- 1o, ao, do, artigo definido masculino do caso dativo singular
- 2o, a, ao, à, do, da, artigo definido neutro do caso dativo singular
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how dem appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Karin gibt dem Kind ein Geschenk.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "dem", not the corpus desk frequency band.