ervsermoWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: er is a pronoun, ermo is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#11,866
“er” frequency rank
#43,878
“ermo” frequency rank
55744
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature er ermo
Definition ele, aquele, aquilo, terceira pessoa do masculino singular do caso nominativo que está só ou desacompanhado; solitário

Letter map: er vs ermo

Shared letters muted; letters that set er and ermo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
er
4 ch
ermo

Part-of-speech tell for er / ermo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: er is apronoun and ermoanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “er” sits inside “ermo”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55744, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

er is recorded at frequency rank #11,866, classified as apron. ermo is at rank #43,878, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈeɾ.mu/.

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 55744, this pair ranks #10,412 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of er vs ermo

Shared letters: er. Private to "er": -. Private to "ermo": mo.

"er" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "ermo" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ermoermmo · erom · errmo · remo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "er" and "ermo" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "er" is a pronoun and "ermo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "er" or "ermo" show up more?
"er" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,866 in our Portuguese list, against #43,878 for "ermo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "er" and "ermo". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "er" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ermo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #10,412 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "er" and "ermo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "elio vs ermo". 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 #10,412 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