Which to use
“dele” is a contraction and “deve” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #261
- “dele” frequency rank
- #182
- “deve” frequency rank
- 443
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | dele | deve |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | contração da preposição de com o pronome pessoal ele | terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo dever |
Letter map: dele vs deve
Shared letters muted; letters that set dele and deve apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Part-of-speech tell for dele / deve
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dele is acontraction and deveaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - l in “dele” becomes v in “deve”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 443, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
dele is recorded at frequency rank #261, classified as acontraction, pronounced /ˈde.lɨ/. 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 443, this pair ranks #75,210 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of dele vs deve
Shared letters: de. Private to "dele": l. Private to "deve": v.
"dele" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "deve" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "dele" and "deve" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "dele" or "deve"?
What to do next
You've compared "dele" and "deve". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "dele" 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 #75,210 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "dele" and "deve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dele vs devi". 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 #75,210 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.