esvsessaWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#2,631
“es” frequency rank
#86
“essa” frequency rank
2717
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature es essa
Definition ele, ela, aquilo, pronome da terceira pessoa do neutro singular do caso nominativo. o estrado onde o caixão é colocado durante as cerimónias/cerimônias fúnebres antes do enterro

Letter map: es vs essa

Shared letters muted; letters that set es and essa apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
es
4 ch
essa

Part-of-speech tell for es / essa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: es is apronoun and essaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “es” sits inside “essa”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2717, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

es is recorded at frequency rank #2,631, classified as apron, pronounced /'ɛs/ ouvir ^(fonte ?). essa is at rank #86, tagged as anoun.

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 2717, this pair ranks #72,567 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of es vs essa

Shared letters: es. Private to "es": -. Private to "essa": a.

"es" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "essa" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • essaesa · esas · sesa

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "es" and "essa" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "es" is a pronoun and "essa" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "es" or "essa" show up more?
"essa" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #86 in our Portuguese list, against #2,631 for "es". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "es" and "essa".

  • Full dictionary entry for "es" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "essa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #72,567 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "es" and "essa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs es". 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 #72,567 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