at vs ater, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#1,457
“at” frequency rank: #39,000
“ater” frequency rank: 40457
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	at	ater
Definition	em, a	não permitir que tenha seguimento; impedir que prossiga

Letter map: at vs ater

Shared letters muted; letters that set at and ater apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch

4 ch

ater

Grammar separator: at vs ater

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: at is apreposition and ateraverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “at” sits inside “ater”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40457, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

at is recorded at frequency rank #1,457, classified as aprep, pronounced \æt\. 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 40457, this pair ranks #25,655 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of at vs ater

Shared letters: at. Private to "at": -. Private to "ater": er.

"at" · 2 letters · shape VC · "ater" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

ater ← aetr · aterr · atter

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "at" and "ater" be used interchangeably?

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

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "at" or "ater" show up more?

"at" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,457 in our Portuguese list, against #39,000 for "ater". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "at" and "ater". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "at" 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 #25,655 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"at" 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 #25,655 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.