alertarvsaltarWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: alertar is a verb, altar is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alertar” is a verb and “altar” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,997
“alertar” frequency rank
#8,141
“altar” frequency rank
19138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alertar altar
Definition pôr em alerta estrutura elevada perante a qual cerimônias religiosas são realizadas ou na qual sacrifícios podem ser oferecidos aos deuses, ancestrais, etc

Letter map: alertar vs altar

Shared letters muted; letters that set alertar and altar apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
alertar
5 ch
altar

Part-of-speech tell for alertar / altar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alertar is averb and altaranoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alertar is recorded at frequency rank #10,997, classified as averb, pronounced /ɐ.lɨɾ.ˈtaɾ/. altar is at rank #8,141, tagged as anoun.

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 19138, this pair ranks #51,675 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of alertar vs altar

Shared letters: alrt. Private to "alertar": e. Private to "altar": -.

"alertar" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC  ·  "altar" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alertaraelrtar · aleratr · alerrtar · alertarr · alertra · alerttar · allertar · alretar
  • altaralatr · alltar · altarr · altra · alttar · atlar · latar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "alertar" for "altar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alertar" is a verb and "altar" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "alertar" or "altar" show up more?
"altar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,141 in our Portuguese list, against #10,997 for "alertar". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "alertar" vs "altar" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "alertar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "altar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #51,675 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alertar" and "altar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "altar 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 #51,675 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