girarvsgranWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: girar is a verb, gran is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#12,256
“girar” frequency rank
#10,731
“gran” frequency rank
22987
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature girar gran
Definition mover(-se) em torno de um eixo, de um centro; rodar grão/grã, forma reduzida de grande; usa-se somente anteposto ao substantivo.

Letter map: girar vs gran

Shared letters muted; letters that set girar and gran apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. girar runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against gran's 4 (CCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
girar
4 ch
gran

Role in the sentence - girar and gran

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: girar is averb and grananadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22987, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

girar is recorded at frequency rank #12,256, classified as averb, pronounced /ʒi.ˈɾaɾ/. gran is at rank #10,731, 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 22987, this pair ranks #46,924 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of girar vs gran

Shared letters: agr. Private to "girar": i. Private to "gran": n.

"girar" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "gran" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • girar ← ggirar · giarr · girarr · girrar · griar · igrar
  • gran ← garn · ggran · grann · grna · grran · rgan

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "girar" and "gran" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "girar" is a verb and "gran" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "girar" or "gran" show up more?
"gran" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,731 in our Portuguese list, against #12,256 for "girar". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "girar" and "gran".

  • Full dictionary entry for "girar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gran" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #46,924 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "girar" and "gran" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gran vs grip". 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 #46,924 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