estávsestateWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: está is a verb, estate is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“está” is a verb and “estate” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45
“está” frequency rank
#32,593
“estate” frequency rank
32638
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature está estate
Definition terceira pessoa do verbo estar no presente do indicativo; indica condição temporária verão

Letter map: está vs estate

Shared letters muted; letters that set está and estate apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. está runs 4 letters (VCCV) against estate's 6 (VCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
está
6 ch
estate

Part-of-speech tell for está / estate

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: está is averb and estateanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32638, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

está is recorded at frequency rank #45, classified as averb. estate is at rank #32,593, tagged as anoun, pronounced /es.ˈta.te/..

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 32638, this pair ranks #35,108 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of está vs estate

Shared letters: est. Private to "está": á. Private to "estate": a.

"está" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "estate" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • estate ← esatte · esstate · estaet · estatte · esttae · esttate · etsate · setate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "está" for "estate" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "está" is a verb and "estate" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "está" or "estate" show up more?
"está" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45 in our Portuguese list, against #32,593 for "estate". 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 "está" and "estate".

  • Full dictionary entry for "está" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "estate" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,108 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "está" and "estate" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "estate vs estrato". 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 #35,108 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