amvsarmaTell them apart

Quick tell: am is a article, arma is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“am” is an article and “arma” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,705
“am” frequency rank
#1,913
“arma” frequency rank
4618
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature am arma
Definition o / a usado com substantivos masculinos no caso nominativo singular quando a palavra começar com as letra b, f, m, p instrumento usado para ataque e defesa

Letter map: am vs arma

Shared letters muted; letters that set am and arma apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
am
4 ch
arma

Part-of-speech tell for am / arma

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: am is anarticle and armaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4618, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

am is recorded at frequency rank #2,705, classified as anarticle. arma is at rank #1,913, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈaɾmɐ/.

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 4618, this pair ranks #70,229 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of am vs arma

Shared letters: am. Private to "am": -. Private to "arma": r.

"am" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "arma" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • armaamra · aram · armma · arrma

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "am" for "arma" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "am" is an article and "arma" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "am" vs "arma" - which ranks higher?
"arma" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,913 in our Portuguese list, against #2,705 for "am". 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 "am" and "arma".

  • Full dictionary entry for "am" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "arma" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,229 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "am" and "arma" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs am". 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 #70,229 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