mordervsmorteWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: morder is a verb, morte is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“morder” is a verb and “morte” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,503
“morder” frequency rank
#281
“morte” frequency rank
11784
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature morder morte
Definition cravar os dentes em ato de morrer ou efeito de matar; fato ou momento que leva algo do estado vivo para o estado morto

Where the eye mixes morder and morte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
morder
5 ch
morte

Visual trap between morder and morte

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: morder is /muɾ.ˈdeɾ/ while morte is /ˈmɔr.tʃi/ /ˈmɔr.ti/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11784, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

morder is recorded at frequency rank #11,503, classified as averb, pronounced /muɾ.ˈdeɾ/. morte is at rank #281, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmɔr.tʃi/ /ˈmɔr.ti/.

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 11784, this pair ranks #60,992 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of morder vs morte

Shared letters: emor. Private to "morder": d. Private to "morte": t.

"morder" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "morte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mordermmorder · modrer · mordder · morderr · mordre · moredr · morrder · mroder
  • mortemmorte · moret · morrte · mortte · motre · mrote · omrte

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "morder" and "morte" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "morder" is a verb and "morte" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "morder" or "morte" show up more?
"morte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #281 in our Portuguese list, against #11,503 for "morder". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "morder" and "morte" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "morder" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "morte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #60,992 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "morder" and "morte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "moer vs morder". 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 #60,992 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