earvserreWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#39,574
“ear” frequency rank
#41,985
“erre” frequency rank
81559
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ear erre
Definition coclear nisto, nisso

Letter map: ear vs erre

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

3 ch
ear
4 ch
erre

Part-of-speech tell for ear / erre

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ear is anadjective and erreapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81559, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ear is recorded at frequency rank #39,574, classified as anadj. erre is at rank #41,985, tagged as apron, pronounced /ˈɛrːɛ/.

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 81559, this pair ranks #1,146 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ear vs erre

Shared letters: er. Private to "ear": a. Private to "erre": -.

"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "erre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • erreere · erer · rere

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ear" and "erre" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ear" is an adjective and "erre" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ear" or "erre"?
"ear" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,574 in our Portuguese list, against #41,985 for "erre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ear" and "erre".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "erre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,146 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ear" and "erre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "erre 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 #1,146 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