destevsdisseTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#346
“deste” frequency rank
#176
“disse” frequency rank
522
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature deste disse
Definition contração da preposição de com o pronome ou determinante demonstrativo este: primeira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo dizer

Letter map: deste vs disse

Shared letters muted; letters that set deste and disse apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. deste and disse follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
deste
5 ch
disse

Part-of-speech tell for deste / disse

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: deste is acontraction and disseaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 522, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

deste is recorded at frequency rank #346, classified as acontraction. disse is at rank #176, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈʤi.se].

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 522, this pair ranks #75,144 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of deste vs disse

Shared letters: des. Private to "deste": t. Private to "disse": i.

"deste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "disse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • deste ← ddeste · deset · desste · destte · detse · dsete · edste
  • disse ← ddisse · dise · dises · dsise · idsse

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "deste" for "disse" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "deste" is a contraction and "disse" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "deste" or "disse"?
"disse" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #176 in our Portuguese list, against #346 for "deste". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "deste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "disse" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #75,144 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "deste" and "disse" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "deste vs destro". 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 #75,144 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