espiavsessaTell them apart

Which to use

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

#41,012
“espia” frequency rank
#86
“essa” frequency rank
41098
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature espia essa
Definition pessoa que observa escondida o estrado onde o caixão é colocado durante as cerimónias/cerimônias fúnebres antes do enterro

Letter map: espia vs essa

Shared letters muted; letters that set espia and essa apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. espia runs 5 letters (VCCVV) against essa's 4 (VCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
espia
4 ch
essa

Spelling & dictionary notes on espia vs essa

espia and essa 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41098, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

espia is recorded at frequency rank #41,012, classified as anoun, pronounced /iʃ.ˈpi.ɐ/. 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 41098, this pair ranks #24,896 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of espia vs essa

Shared letters: aes. Private to "espia": ip. Private to "essa": -.

"espia" · 5 letters · shape VCCVV  ·  "essa" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • espia ← epsia · esipa · espai · esppia · esspia · sepia
  • essa ← esa · esas · sesa

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "espia" and "essa" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "espia" vs "essa" - which ranks higher?
"essa" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #86 in our Portuguese list, against #41,012 for "espia". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "espia" and "essa". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "espia" 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 #24,896 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "espia" and "essa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "espia vs espinal". 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 #24,896 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