afraidvsatrairTell them apart

Quick tell: afraid is a adjective, atrair is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“afraid” is an adjective and “atrair” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,853
“afraid” frequency rank
#4,205
“atrair” frequency rank
40058
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature afraid atrair
Definition com medo; temeroso puxar para usando de charme, persuasão, etc

Letter map: afraid vs atrair

Shared letters muted; letters that set afraid and atrair apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
afraid
6 ch
atrair

Part-of-speech tell for afraid / atrair

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: afraid is anadjective and atrairaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40058, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

afraid is recorded at frequency rank #35,853, classified as anadj. atrair is at rank #4,205, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɐ.tɾɐ.ˈiɾ/.

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 40058, this pair ranks #26,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of afraid vs atrair

Shared letters: air. Private to "afraid": df. Private to "atrair": t.

"afraid" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC  ·  "atrair" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • afraidafarid · affraid · afradi · afraidd · afriad · afrraid · arfaid · faraid
  • atrairartair · atarir · atrairr · atrari · atriar · atrrair · attrair · tarair

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "afraid" and "atrair" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "afraid" is an adjective and "atrair" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "afraid" or "atrair" show up more?
"atrair" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,205 in our Portuguese list, against #35,853 for "afraid". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "afraid" and "atrair". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "afraid" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "atrair" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #26,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "afraid" and "atrair" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "afraid vs arraia". 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 #26,103 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