águavsapudTell them apart

Quick tell: água is a noun, apud is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“água” is a noun and “apud” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#254
“água” frequency rank
#40,428
“apud” frequency rank
40682
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature água apud
Definition substância (H₂O) líquida e incolor, insípida e inodora, essencial para a vida da maior parte dos organismos vivos e excelente solvente para muitas outras substâncias; óxido de hidrogênio palavra latina usada para citações indiretas (citar documentos que não foram obtidos diretamente, mas por meio de outras obras)

Letter map: água vs apud

Shared letters muted; letters that set água and apud apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. água (VCVV) and apud (VCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
água
4 ch
apud

Part-of-speech tell for água / apud

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: água is anoun and apudapreposition. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40682, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

água is recorded at frequency rank #254, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈa.gwɐ/. apud is at rank #40,428, tagged as aprep.

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 40682, this pair ranks #25,386 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of água vs apud

Shared letters: au. Private to "água": gá. Private to "apud": dp.

"água" · 4 letters · shape VCVV  ·  "apud" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • apud ← apdu · appud · apudd · aupd · paud

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "água" and "apud" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "água" is a noun and "apud" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "água" or "apud" show up more?
"água" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #254 in our Portuguese list, against #40,428 for "apud". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "água" and "apud". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "água" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "apud" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,386 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "água" and "apud" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "apo vs apud". 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 #25,386 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