desirevsdesteWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: desire is a noun, deste is a contraction, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“desire” is a noun and “deste” is a contraction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#32,556
“desire” frequency rank
#346
“deste” frequency rank
32902
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature desire deste
Definition desejo contração da preposição de com o pronome ou determinante demonstrativo este:

Letter map: desire vs deste

Shared letters muted; letters that set desire and deste apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. desire runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against deste's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
desire
5 ch
deste

Part-of-speech tell for desire / deste

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: desire is anoun and desteacontraction. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32902, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

desire is recorded at frequency rank #32,556, classified as anoun, pronounced /dɪˈzaɪə/. deste is at rank #346, tagged as acontraction.

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 32902, this pair ranks #34,755 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of desire vs deste

Shared letters: des. Private to "desire": ir. Private to "deste": t.

"desire" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "deste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • desire ← ddesire · deisre · desier · desirre · desrie · dessire · dseire · edsire
  • deste ← ddeste · deset · desste · destte · detse · dsete · edste

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "desire" for "deste" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "desire" is a noun and "deste" a contraction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "desire" vs "deste" - which ranks higher?
"deste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #346 in our Portuguese list, against #32,556 for "desire". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "desire" vs "deste" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "desire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "deste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #34,755 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "desire" and "deste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "desire vs device". 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 #34,755 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