fairvsfalirWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: fair is a adjective, falir is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fair” is an adjective and “falir” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#12,248
“fair” frequency rank
#27,479
“falir” frequency rank
39727
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fair falir
Definition justo ir à falência, não ter como cumprir com suas obrigações financeiras

Letter map: fair vs falir

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

4 ch
fair
5 ch
falir

Grammar separator: fair vs falir

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fair is anadjective and faliraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39727, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fair is recorded at frequency rank #12,248, classified as anadj, pronounced /fɛːɐ̯/ ouvir^(fonte ?). falir is at rank #27,479, tagged as averb.

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 39727, this pair ranks #26,471 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fair vs falir

Shared letters: afir. Private to "fair": -. Private to "falir": l.

"fair" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "falir" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fair ← afir · fairr · fari · ffair · fiar
  • falir ← aflir · failr · falirr · fallir · falri · ffalir · flair

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "fair" and "falir" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fair" is an adjective and "falir" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "fair" vs "falir" - which ranks higher?
"fair" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,248 in our Portuguese list, against #27,479 for "falir". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "fair" and "falir". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fair" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "falir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #26,471 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fair" and "falir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "faia vs falir". 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 #26,471 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