frei
The verdict
“frei” is a regularly-used Portuguese word, ranked #9,500 in Portuguese word frequency and used as a noun.
- #9,500
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - variante ortográfica de freire
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 | frei |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #9,500 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “frei” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for frei is 4 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #9,500 in overall Portuguese word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "variante ortográfica de freire".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for frei, with forms such as "feri", "ffrei", and "frie". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fui", "fry", "frio", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is frei, spelled F-R-E-I.
Definition
- 1variante ortográfica de freire
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: feri,ffrei,frie,frrei,rfei
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of frei - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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
How do you spell "frei"?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “frei”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is F-R-E-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “fui” - see the side-by-side comparison. frei vs fui
- Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.