contervscontestWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: conter is a verb, contest is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“conter” is a verb and “contest” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,457
“conter” frequency rank
#27,803
“contest” frequency rank
32260
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature conter contest
Definition encerrar competição, concurso

Letter map: conter vs contest

Shared letters muted; letters that set conter and contest apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. conter runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against contest's 7 (CVCCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
conter
7 ch
contest

Part-of-speech tell for conter / contest

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: conter is averb and contestanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32260, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

conter is recorded at frequency rank #4,457, classified as averb, pronounced /kõ.ˈteɾ/. contest is at rank #27,803, tagged as anoun.

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 32260, this pair ranks #35,594 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of conter vs contest

Shared letters: cenot. Private to "conter": r. Private to "contest": s.

"conter" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "contest" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • conter ← cconter · cnoter · conetr · connter · conterr · contter · cotner · ocnter
  • contest ← ccontest · cnotest · conetst · conntest · contesst · contestt · contets · contset

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "conter" and "contest" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "conter" is a verb and "contest" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "conter" or "contest"?
"conter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,457 in our Portuguese list, against #27,803 for "contest". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "conter" and "contest".

  • Full dictionary entry for "conter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "contest" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,594 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "conter" and "contest" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "contento vs contest". 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 #35,594 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