alter vs ater, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#23,189
“alter” frequency rank: #39,000
“ater” frequency rank: 62189
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	alter	ater
Definition	outro (dentre dois)	não permitir que tenha seguimento; impedir que prossiga

Letter map: alter vs ater

Shared letters muted; letters that set alter and ater apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch

alter

4 ch

ater

Role in the sentence - alter and ater

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alter is apronoun and ateraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62189, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alter is recorded at frequency rank #23,189, classified as apron. ater is at rank #39,000, tagged as averb.

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 62189, this pair ranks #6,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of alter vs ater

Shared letters: aert. Private to "alter": l. Private to "ater": -.

"alter" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC · "ater" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

alter ← aletr · allter · alterr · altre · altter · atler
ater ← aetr · aterr · atter

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "alter" and "ater" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

Which is more common, "alter" or "ater"?

"alter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,189 in our Portuguese list, against #39,000 for "ater". 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 "ater".

Full dictionary entry for "alter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ater" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #6,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"alter" and "ater" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "atar vs ater". 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 #6,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.