er vs être, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#11,866
“er” frequency rank: #48,731
“être” frequency rank: 60597
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	er	être
Definition	ele, aquele, aquilo, terceira pessoa do masculino singular do caso nominativo	ser vivo

Letter map: er vs être

Shared letters muted; letters that set er and être apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

4 ch

être

Part-of-speech tell for er / être

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: er is apronoun and êtreanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60597, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

er is recorded at frequency rank #11,866, classified as apron. être is at rank #48,731, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɛtʁ/.

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 60597, this pair ranks #7,559 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of er vs être

Shared letters: er. Private to "er": -. Private to "être": tê.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "er" for "être" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "er" is a pronoun and "être" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "er" vs "être" - which ranks higher?

"er" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,866 in our Portuguese list, against #48,731 for "être". 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 "être". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "er" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "être" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #7,559 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"er" and "être" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "erre vs être". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #7,559 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.