apertar vs apesar, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“apertar” is a verb and “apesar” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#6,837
“apertar” frequency rank: #404
“apesar” frequency rank: 7241
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	apertar	apesar
Definition	aproximar muito forçando	não obstante

Letter map: apertar vs apesar

Shared letters muted; letters that set apertar and apesar apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch

apertar

6 ch

apesar

Role in the sentence - apertar and apesar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: apertar is averb and apesaranadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7241, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

apertar is recorded at frequency rank #6,837, classified as averb. apesar is at rank #404, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ɐ.pe.ˈzaɾ/.

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 7241, this pair ranks #66,939 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of apertar vs apesar

Shared letters: aepr. Private to "apertar": t. Private to "apesar": s.

"apertar" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC · "apesar" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

apertar ← aeprtar · aperatr · aperrtar · apertarr · apertra · aperttar · apetrar · appertar
apesar ← aepsar · apeasr · apesarr · apesra · apessar · appesar · apsear · paesar

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "apertar" and "apesar" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "apertar" is a verb and "apesar" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "apertar" or "apesar"?

"apesar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #404 in our Portuguese list, against #6,837 for "apertar". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "apertar" and "apesar". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "apertar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "apesar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #66,939 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"apertar" and "apesar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aparar vs apertar". 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 #66,939 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.