banvsbeneTell them apart

Quick tell: ban is a noun, bene is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ban” is a noun and “bene” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,668
“ban” frequency rank
#40,915
“bene” frequency rank
54583
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ban bene
Definition proibição de alto nível social

Letter map: ban vs bene

Shared letters muted; letters that set ban and bene apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ban runs 3 letters (CVC) against bene's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ban
4 ch
bene

Part-of-speech tell for ban / bene

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ban is anoun and beneanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54583, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ban is recorded at frequency rank #13,668, classified as anoun. bene is at rank #40,915, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈbɛ.ne/.

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 54583, this pair ranks #11,165 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ban vs bene

Shared letters: bn. Private to "ban": a. Private to "bene": e.

"ban" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "bene" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bene ← bbene · benne · bnee · ebne

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ban" and "bene" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ban" is a noun and "bene" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ban" vs "bene" - which ranks higher?
"ban" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,668 in our Portuguese list, against #40,915 for "bene". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "ban" vs "bene" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ban" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bene" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #11,165 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ban" and "bene" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bene vs bile". 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 #11,165 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