né

verb

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“né” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,856) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#1,856
frequency rank, Portuguese
881
“N” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - particípio passado do verbo naitre

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

né vs no
50% similar
né vs nu
50% similar
né vs ni
50% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for né
PropertyValue
Headwordné
LanguagePortuguese
Part of speechVerb
Letters2
Frequency rank#1,856
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “né” sits in Portuguese frequency

Every-word frequency runs from the handful of words we use constantly (left) to the long tail used once in a blue moon (right). né lands here:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Scale is logarithmic (each tick is 10× rarer). Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for né is neighbouring look-alikes ("no", "nu", …), not just typos; it is averb. Frequency #1,856 among 881 “N” headwords. Gloss: "particípio passado do verbo naitre".

No generated misspelling entries exist for né in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "no", "nu", "ni", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct Portuguese form is né, spelled N-É.

Definition

  1. 1
    particípio passado do verbo naitre

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 "né"?
"né" is spelled N-É.
What does "né" mean?
As a verb, "né" means: particípio passado do verbo naitre
What words are commonly confused with "né"?
"né" is commonly confused with "no", "nu", "ni". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "né" come from?
"né" is a Portuguese word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Using “né”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct Portuguese spelling is N-É - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Don't mix it up with “no” - see the side-by-side comparison. né vs no
  • Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese words

Words at a similar Portuguese frequency

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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list