havevshouveWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#7,419
“have” frequency rank
#672
“houve” frequency rank
8091
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature have houve
Definition ter, possuir primeira pessoa do singular do pretérito perfeito do indicativo do verbo haver

Letter map: have vs houve

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

4 ch
have
5 ch
houve

Corpus notes: have and houve

have and houve 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8091, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

have is recorded at frequency rank #7,419, classified as averb. houve is at rank #672, tagged as averb.

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 8091, this pair ranks #65,806 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of have vs houve

Shared letters: ehv. Private to "have": a. Private to "houve": ou.

"have" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "houve" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • have ← ahve · haev · havve · hhave · hvae
  • houve ← hhouve · houev · houvve · hovue · huove · ohuve

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "have" and "houve" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "have" vs "houve" - which ranks higher?
"houve" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #672 in our Portuguese list, against #7,419 for "have". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "have" and "houve". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "have" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "houve" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #65,806 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "have" and "houve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "haber vs have". 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 #65,806 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