falirvsfugirTell them apart

Which to use

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

#27,479
“falir” frequency rank
#2,427
“fugir” frequency rank
29906
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature falir fugir
Definition ir à falência, não ter como cumprir com suas obrigações financeiras retirar-se

Letter map: falir vs fugir

Shared letters muted; letters that set falir and fugir apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. falir and fugir follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
falir
5 ch
fugir

Pair insight - falir / fugir

falir and fugir 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29906, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

falir is recorded at frequency rank #27,479, classified as averb. fugir is at rank #2,427, tagged as averb, pronounced /fu.ˈʒiɾ/.

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 29906, this pair ranks #38,619 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of falir vs fugir

Shared letters: fir. Private to "falir": al. Private to "fugir": gu.

"falir" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "fugir" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • falir ← aflir · failr · falirr · fallir · falri · ffalir · flair
  • fugir ← ffugir · fguir · fuggir · fugirr · fugri · fuigr · ufgir

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "falir" and "fugir" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "falir" or "fugir"?
"fugir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,427 in our Portuguese list, against #27,479 for "falir". 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 "falir" and "fugir".

  • Full dictionary entry for "falir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fugir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,619 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "falir" and "fugir" 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 #38,619 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