águasvsatualWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: águas is a noun, atual is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“águas” is a noun and “atual” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,077
“águas” frequency rank
#694
“atual” frequency rank
2771
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature águas atual
Definition marés que está em atuação

Letter map: águas vs atual

Shared letters muted; letters that set águas and atual apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

5 ch
águas
5 ch
atual

Role in the sentence - águas and atual

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: águas is anoun and atualanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2771, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

águas is recorded at frequency rank #2,077, classified as anoun. atual is at rank #694, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ɐ.ˈtwaɫ/.

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 2771, this pair ranks #72,503 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of águas vs atual

Shared letters: au. Private to "águas": gsá. Private to "atual": lt.

"águas" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC  ·  "atual" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • atualataul · attual · atuall · atula · autal · taual

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "águas" for "atual" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "águas" is a noun and "atual" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "águas" vs "atual" - which ranks higher?
"atual" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #694 in our Portuguese list, against #2,077 for "águas". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "águas" and "atual". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "águas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "atual" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #72,503 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "águas" and "atual" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "atar vs atual". 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 #72,503 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