givevsgraveTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#11,276
“give” frequency rank
#2,096
“grave” frequency rank
13372
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature give grave
Definition dar som de baixa frequência, no limite inferior da audição humana

Letter map: give vs grave

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

4 ch
give
5 ch
grave

Grammar separator: give vs grave

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: give is averb and graveanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13372, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

give is recorded at frequency rank #11,276, classified as averb, pronounced /gɪv/. 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 13372, this pair ranks #58,989 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of give vs grave

Shared letters: egv. Private to "give": i. Private to "grave": ar.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • give ← ggive · giev · givve · gvie · igve
  • grave ← garve · ggrave · graev · gravve · grrave · grvae · rgave

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "give" and "grave" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "give" is a verb and "grave" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "give" 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 #11,276 for "give". 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 "give" and "grave".

  • Full dictionary entry for "give" 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 #58,989 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "give" and "grave" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "giga vs give". 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 #58,989 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