apesarvsapurarWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: apesar is a adverb, apurar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#404
“apesar” frequency rank
#11,390
“apurar” frequency rank
11794
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature apesar apurar
Definition não obstante tornar puro; purificar; (por extensão) acrescentar e/ou suprimir características, de forma a melhorar:

Letter map: apesar vs apurar

Shared letters muted; letters that set apesar and apurar apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
apesar
6 ch
apurar

Role in the sentence - apesar and apurar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: apesar is anadverb and apuraraverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11794, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

apesar is recorded at frequency rank #404, classified as anadv, pronounced /ɐ.pe.ˈzaɾ/. apurar is at rank #11,390, 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 11794, this pair ranks #60,983 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of apesar vs apurar

Shared letters: apr. Private to "apesar": es. Private to "apurar": u.

"apesar" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC  ·  "apurar" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • apesaraepsar · apeasr · apesarr · apesra · apessar · appesar · apsear · paesar
  • apurarappurar · apruar · apuarr · apurarr · apurra · apurrar · auprar · paurar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "apesar" for "apurar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "apesar" is an adverb and "apurar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "apesar" or "apurar" show up more?
"apesar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #404 in our Portuguese list, against #11,390 for "apurar". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "apesar" vs "apurar" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "apesar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "apurar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #60,983 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "apesar" and "apurar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "apurar vs arar". 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 #60,983 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