CEI vs com, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#29,625
“CEI” frequency rank: #14
“com” frequency rank: 29639
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	CEI	com
Definition	Communauté des États Indépendants (português: Comunidade dos Estados Independentes, CEI)	indica várias relações: companhia, causa, instrumento, ligação, modo, oposição

Where the eye mixes CEI and com

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

CEI

3 ch

com

Why the eye confuses CEI with com

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: CEI is /se.ø.i/ while com is /kõ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (abbrev vs preposition), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29639, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

CEI is recorded at frequency rank #29,625, classified as anabbrev, pronounced /se.ø.i/. com is at rank #14, tagged as aprep, pronounced /kõ/.

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 29639, this pair ranks #38,945 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of CEI vs com

Shared letters: c. Private to "CEI": ei. Private to "com": mo.

"CEI" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "com" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "CEI" and "com" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "CEI" is an abbrev and "com" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "CEI" or "com" show up more?

"com" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14 in our Portuguese list, against #29,625 for "CEI". 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 "CEI" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "com" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #38,945 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"CEI" and "com" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CEI vs coin". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #38,945 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.