ear vs era, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#39,574
“ear” frequency rank: #72
“era” frequency rank: 39646
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ear	era
Definition	coclear	época, período

Letter map: ear vs era

Shared letters muted; letters that set ear and era apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

ear

3 ch

era

Role in the sentence - ear and era

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ear is anadjective and eraanoun. On the page they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (ar ↔ ra) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39646, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ear is recorded at frequency rank #39,574, classified as anadj. era is at rank #72, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɛ.ɾə/.

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 39646, this pair ranks #26,573 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ear vs era

Shared letters: aer. Private to "ear": -. Private to "era": -.

"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "era" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ear" for "era" ever safe?

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

Which is more common, "ear" or "era"?

"era" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #72 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

You've compared "ear" and "era". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "era" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #26,573 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ear" and "era" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs être". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #26,573 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.