darevsdeveTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#37,740
“dare” frequency rank
#182
“deve” frequency rank
37922
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dare deve
Definition desafio terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo dever

Letter map: dare vs deve

Shared letters muted; letters that set dare and deve apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. dare and deve follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
dare
4 ch
deve

Role in the sentence - dare and deve

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dare is anoun and deveaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37922, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dare is recorded at frequency rank #37,740, classified as anoun, pronounced /deə(ɹ)/. deve is at rank #182, tagged as averb.

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 37922, this pair ranks #28,623 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dare vs deve

Shared letters: de. Private to "dare": ar. Private to "deve": v.

"dare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "deve" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dare ← adre · darre · ddare · drae
  • deve ← ddeve · deev · devve · dvee · edve

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dare" for "deve" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dare" is a noun and "deve" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "dare" or "deve" show up more?
"deve" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #182 in our Portuguese list, against #37,740 for "dare". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "dare" and "deve". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "deve" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #28,623 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dare" and "deve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dare vs dat". 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 #28,623 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