ear vs em, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ear” is an adjective and “em” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,574
“ear” frequency rank: #7
“em” frequency rank: 39581
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ear	em
Definition	coclear	exprime a ideia de:

Letter map: ear vs em

Shared letters muted; letters that set ear and em apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ear

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for ear / em

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ear is anadjective and emapreposition. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39581, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ear is recorded at frequency rank #39,574, classified as anadj. em is at rank #7, tagged as aprep, pronounced /ɐj̃/.

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 39581, this pair ranks #26,635 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ear vs em

Shared letters: e. Private to "ear": ar. Private to "em": m.

"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "em" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ear" and "em" be used interchangeably?

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

Frequency check: "ear" vs "em" - which ranks higher?

"em" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7 in our Portuguese list, against #39,574 for "ear". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "ear" vs "em" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "em" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #26,635 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ear" and "em" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs être". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #26,635 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.