afetarvsapesarWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: afetar is a verb, apesar is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“afetar” is a verb and “apesar” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,855
“afetar” frequency rank
#404
“apesar” frequency rank
8259
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature afetar apesar
Definition fingir não obstante

Letter map: afetar vs apesar

Shared letters muted; letters that set afetar and apesar apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
afetar
6 ch
apesar

Role in the sentence - afetar and apesar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: afetar is averb and apesaranadverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8259, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

afetar is recorded at frequency rank #7,855, classified as averb. apesar is at rank #404, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ɐ.pe.ˈzaɾ/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 8259, this pair ranks #65,580 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of afetar vs apesar

Shared letters: aer. Private to "afetar": ft. Private to "apesar": ps.

"afetar" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC  ·  "apesar" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • afetaraeftar · afeatr · afetarr · afetra · afettar · affetar · aftear · faetar
  • apesaraepsar · apeasr · apesarr · apesra · apessar · appesar · apsear · paesar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "afetar" for "apesar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "afetar" is a verb and "apesar" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "afetar" or "apesar" show up more?
"apesar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #404 in our Portuguese list, against #7,855 for "afetar". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "afetar" vs "apesar" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "afetar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "apesar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #65,580 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "afetar" and "apesar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "afetar vs atar". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #65,580 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list