atévsatumWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: até is a adverb, atum is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“até” is an adverb and “atum” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#55
“até” frequency rank
#16,684
“atum” frequency rank
16739
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature até atum
Definition também, inclusive peixe da família dos Escombrídeos muito usado na alimentação quer em fresco, quer em conserva

Where the eye mixes até and atum

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
até
4 ch
atum

Why the eye confuses até with atum

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: até is /ɐ.ˈtɛ/ while atum is /ɐ.ˈtũ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adverb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16739, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

até is recorded at frequency rank #55, classified as anadv, pronounced /ɐ.ˈtɛ/. atum is at rank #16,684, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɐ.ˈtũ/.

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 16739, this pair ranks #54,718 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of até vs atum

Shared letters: at. Private to "até": é. Private to "atum": mu.

"até" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "atum" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • atumatmu · attum · atumm · autm · taum

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "até" and "atum" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "até" is an adverb and "atum" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "até" or "atum" show up more?
"até" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #55 in our Portuguese list, against #16,684 for "atum". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "até" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "atum" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #54,718 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "até" and "atum" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "atar vs atum". 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 #54,718 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