altervsanteTell them apart

Quick tell: alter is a pronoun, ante is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#23,189
“alter” frequency rank
#6,501
“ante” frequency rank
29690
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alter ante
Definition outro (dentre dois) antes, precedentemente, anteriormente

Letter map: alter vs ante

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

5 ch
alter
4 ch
ante

Part-of-speech tell for alter / ante

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alter is apronoun and anteanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29690, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alter is recorded at frequency rank #23,189, classified as apron. ante is at rank #6,501, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈɐ̃.tɨ/.

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 29690, this pair ranks #38,882 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of alter vs ante

Shared letters: aet. Private to "alter": lr. Private to "ante": n.

"alter" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "ante" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alteraletr · allter · alterr · altre · altter · atler
  • anteanet · annte · antte · atne · nate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "alter" for "ante" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alter" is a pronoun and "ante" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "alter" vs "ante" - which ranks higher?
"ante" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,501 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 "alter" and "ante".

  • Full dictionary entry for "alter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ante" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,882 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alter" and "ante" 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 #38,882 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