altarvsalvaráWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“altar” and “alvará” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#8,141
“altar” frequency rank
#17,689
“alvará” frequency rank
25830
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature altar alvará
Definition estrutura elevada perante a qual cerimônias religiosas são realizadas ou na qual sacrifícios podem ser oferecidos aos deuses, ancestrais, etc documento emitido por autoridade administrativa ou judiciária que ordena ou permite determinado ato

Letter map: altar vs alvará

Shared letters muted; letters that set altar and alvará apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. altar runs 5 letters (VCCVC) against alvará's 6 (VCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
altar
6 ch
alvará

Pair insight - altar / alvará

altar and alvará are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25830, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

altar is recorded at frequency rank #8,141, classified as anoun. alvará is at rank #17,689, tagged as anoun, pronounced /aɫ.vɐ.ˈɾa/.

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 25830, this pair ranks #43,413 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of altar vs alvará

Shared letters: alr. Private to "altar": t. Private to "alvará": vá.

"altar" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "alvará" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • altar ← alatr · alltar · altarr · altra · alttar · atlar · latar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "altar" for "alvará" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "altar" or "alvará"?
"altar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,141 in our Portuguese list, against #17,689 for "alvará". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "altar" and "alvará". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "altar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "alvará" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,413 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "altar" and "alvará" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alçar vs alvará". 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 #43,413 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