ervservaConfusable pair

Quick tell: er is a pronoun, erva is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#11,866
“er” frequency rank
#8,469
“erva” frequency rank
20335
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature er erva
Definition ele, aquele, aquilo, terceira pessoa do masculino singular do caso nominativo liamba

Letter map: er vs erva

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

2 ch
er
4 ch
erva

Part-of-speech tell for er / erva

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: er is apronoun and ervaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “er” sits inside “erva”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20335, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

er is recorded at frequency rank #11,866, classified as apron. erva is at rank #8,469, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɛɾ.vɐ/.

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 20335, this pair ranks #50,202 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of er vs erva

Shared letters: er. Private to "er": -. Private to "erva": av.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ervaerav · errva · ervva · evra · reva

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "er" and "erva" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "er" is a pronoun and "erva" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "er" vs "erva" - which ranks higher?
"erva" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,469 in our Portuguese list, against #11,866 for "er". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "er" vs "erva" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "er" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "erva" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #50,202 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "er" and "erva" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "er 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 #50,202 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