feravsfernTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#9,053
“fera” frequency rank
#48,930
“fern” frequency rank
57983
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fera fern
Definition animal feroz e carnívoro longe, distante, longínquo

Letter map: fera vs fern

Shared letters muted; letters that set fera and fern apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
fera
4 ch
fern

Part-of-speech tell for fera / fern

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fera is anoun and fernanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “fera” becomes n in “fern”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57983, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fera is recorded at frequency rank #9,053, classified as anoun. fern is at rank #48,930, tagged as anadj, pronounced /fɛʀn/ ouvir^(fonte ?).

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 57983, this pair ranks #9,000 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fera vs fern

Shared letters: efr. Private to "fera": a. Private to "fern": n.

"fera" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "fern" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feraefra · fear · ffera · frea
  • fernefrn · fenr · fernn · ferrn · ffern · fren

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fera" for "fern" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fera" is a noun and "fern" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "fera" or "fern" show up more?
"fera" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,053 in our Portuguese list, against #48,930 for "fern". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "fera" vs "fern" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fera" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fern" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #9,000 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fera" and "fern" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fern vs fon". 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 #9,000 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