épocavséticaTell them apart

Which to use

“época” and “ética” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#681
“época” frequency rank
#3,815
“ética” frequency rank
4496
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature época ética
Definition em geral, determinado momento do tempo estudo filosófico das leis morais que regem as ações humanas

Letter map: época vs ética

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

5 ch
época
5 ch
ética

Corpus notes: época and ética

época and ética are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4496, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

época is recorded at frequency rank #681, classified as anoun. ética is at rank #3,815, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɛ.ti.kɐ/.

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 4496, this pair ranks #70,380 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of época vs ética

Shared letters: acé. Private to "época": op. Private to "ética": it.

"época" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "ética" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "época" and "ética" be used interchangeably?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "época" or "ética" show up more?
"época" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #681 in our Portuguese list, against #3,815 for "ética". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "época" and "ética".

  • Full dictionary entry for "época" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ética" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,380 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "época" and "ética" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Érico vs ética". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #70,380 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