atvsavConfusable pair

Quick tell: at is a preposition, av is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#1,457
“at” frequency rank
#5,821
“av” frequency rank
7278
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature at av
Definition em, a audiovisuel ("audiovisual"):

Letter map: at vs av

Shared letters muted; letters that set at and av apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch
at
2 ch
av

Part-of-speech tell for at / av

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: at is apreposition and avanabbrev. On the page they differ by a single letter - t in “at” becomes v in “av”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7278, 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\. av is at rank #5,821, tagged as anabbrev.

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 7278, this pair ranks #66,886 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of at vs av

Shared letters: a. Private to "at": t. Private to "av": v.

"at" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "av" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "at" for "av" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "at" is a preposition and "av" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "at" or "av" show up more?
"at" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,457 in our Portuguese list, against #5,821 for "av". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "at" vs "av" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "at" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "av" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #66,886 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "at" and "av" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs av". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #66,886 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