um
/ũw/
The verdict
“um” is in the everyday core of Portuguese, ranked #12 in Portuguese word frequency and used as an article.
- #12
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 2
- letters
- 19
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - qualquer
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 | um |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Article |
| IPA | /ũw/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 19 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “um” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for um is 2 letters long, classified as an article, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ũw/. Corpus data places it at rank #12 in overall Portuguese word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "qualquer".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for um, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 19 confusable-pair relationships, "us", "ur", "ut", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct Portuguese form is um, spelled U-M.
Definition
- 1qualquer
This word in other languages
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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Using “um”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is U-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ũw/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “us” - see the side-by-side comparison. um vs us
- 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.