desde vs donde, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“desde” is a preposition and “donde” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#155
“desde” frequency rank: #13,273
“donde” frequency rank: 13428
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	desde	donde
Definition	a começar de; a partir de	pelo que; daí se conclui:

Letter map: desde vs donde

Shared letters muted; letters that set desde and donde apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

desde

5 ch

donde

Role in the sentence - desde and donde

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: desde is apreposition and dondeanadverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13428, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

desde is recorded at frequency rank #155, classified as aprep, pronounced /ˈdeʒ.dɨ/. donde is at rank #13,273, tagged as anadv.

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 13428, this pair ranks #58,917 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of desde vs donde

Shared letters: de. Private to "desde": s. Private to "donde": no.

"desde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "donde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

desde ← ddesde · dedse · desdde · desed · dessde · dsede · edsde
donde ← ddonde · dnode · dodne · dondde · doned · donnde · odnde

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "desde" for "donde" ever safe?

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

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "desde" or "donde" show up more?

"desde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #155 in our Portuguese list, against #13,273 for "donde". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "desde" and "donde".

Full dictionary entry for "desde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "donde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #58,917 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"desde" and "donde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dodo vs donde". 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 #58,917 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.