gate vs grave, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#20,008
“gate” frequency rank: #2,096
“grave” frequency rank: 22104
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	gate	grave
Definition	portão; portal; porteira	som de baixa frequência, no limite inferior da audição humana

Letter map: gate vs grave

Shared letters muted; letters that set gate and grave apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

gate

5 ch

grave

Grammar separator: gate vs grave

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: gate is anoun and graveanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22104, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gate is recorded at frequency rank #20,008, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡeɪt/. grave is at rank #2,096, 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 22104, this pair ranks #48,022 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of gate vs grave

Shared letters: aeg. Private to "gate": t. Private to "grave": rv.

"gate" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "grave" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

gate ← agte · gaet · gatte · ggate · gtae
grave ← garve · ggrave · graev · gravve · grrave · grvae · rgave

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "gate" for "grave" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "gate" is a noun and "grave" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "gate" or "grave" show up more?

"grave" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,096 in our Portuguese list, against #20,008 for "gate". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "gate" and "grave". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "gate" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "grave" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #48,022 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"gate" and "grave" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gate vs GOAT". 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 #48,022 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.