tem
The verdict
“tem” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #33) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #33
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 917
- “T” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo ter
Corpus desk
Index PT-tem · tem · Portuguese
tem · rank #33 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #33
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 917
- PHOTO-FINISH sua
Nearest frequency peer: sua (-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 “tem”
Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo
- ser
ser
99,971 corpus weight
- seu
seu
99,970 corpus weight
- sua
sua
99,969 corpus weight
- tem
tem
99,968 corpus weight
- são
são
99,967 corpus weight
- das
das
99,966 corpus weight
What this shows As barras situam “tem” 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 | tem |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #33 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “tem”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for tem is neighbouring look-alikes ("to", "tu", …), not just typos; it is averb. Frequency #33 among 917 “T” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for tem, a sign its spelling follows regular Portuguese conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "to", "tu", "ti", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is tem, spelled T-E-M.
Definition
- 1terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo ter
- 2segunda pessoa do singular do imperativo afirmativo do verbo ter
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tem appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
ele/ ela/ você tem
Não tem um ledo orgulho e geral gosto,
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 "tem"?
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Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "tem", not the corpus desk frequency band.