earvserrarWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ear is a adjective, errar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#39,574
“ear” frequency rank
#10,525
“errar” frequency rank
50099
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ear errar
Definition coclear cometer erro em

Letter map: ear vs errar

Shared letters muted; letters that set ear and errar apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
ear
5 ch
errar

Grammar separator: ear vs errar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ear is anadjective and erraraverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50099, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ear is recorded at frequency rank #39,574, classified as anadj. errar is at rank #10,525, tagged as averb, pronounced /i.ˈRaɾ/.

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 50099, this pair ranks #14,882 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ear vs errar

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

"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "errar" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • errarerar · erarr · errarr · errra · rerar

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ear" and "errar" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ear" is an adjective and "errar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ear" or "errar" show up more?
"errar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,525 in our Portuguese list, against #39,574 for "ear". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "errar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,882 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ear" and "errar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs être". 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 #14,882 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