alt vs alter, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“alt” is an adjective and “alter” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#21,650
“alt” frequency rank: #23,189
“alter” frequency rank: 44839
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	alt	alter
Definition	velho	outro (dentre dois)

Letter map: alt vs alter

Shared letters muted; letters that set alt and alter apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch

alt

5 ch

alter

Part-of-speech tell for alt / alter

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alt is anadjective and alterapronoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “alt” sits inside “alter”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44839, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alt is recorded at frequency rank #21,650, classified as anadj, pronounced /alt/. alter is at rank #23,189, tagged as apron.

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 44839, this pair ranks #20,586 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of alt vs alter

Shared letters: alt. Private to "alt": -. Private to "alter": er.

"alt" · 3 letters · shape VCC · "alter" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

alter ← aletr · allter · alterr · altre · altter · atler

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "alt" and "alter" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alt" is an adjective and "alter" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "alt" vs "alter" - which ranks higher?

"alt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,650 in our Portuguese list, against #23,189 for "alter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "alt" and "alter".

Full dictionary entry for "alt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "alter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #20,586 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"alt" and "alter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alles vs alter". 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 #20,586 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.