facevsfreeTell them apart

Quick tell: face is a noun, free is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“face” is a noun and “free” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,395
“face” frequency rank
#3,331
“free” frequency rank
4726
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature face free
Definition parte do corpo humano onde se encontram os olhos, nariz e boca ver gratuito, de graça

Letter map: face vs free

Shared letters muted; letters that set face and free apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
face
4 ch
free

Part-of-speech tell for face / free

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: face is anoun and freeanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4726, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

face is recorded at frequency rank #1,395, classified as anoun. free is at rank #3,331, tagged as anadj.

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 4726, this pair ranks #70,077 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of face vs free

Shared letters: ef. Private to "face": ac. Private to "free": r.

"face" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "free" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • faceafce · facce · faec · fcae · fface
  • freefere · ffree · fre · frree · rfee

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "face" for "free" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "face" is a noun and "free" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "face" or "free" show up more?
"face" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,395 in our Portuguese list, against #3,331 for "free". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "face" vs "free" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "face" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "free" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,077 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "face" and "free" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "face vs fava". 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 #70,077 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