né vs neck, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#1,856
“né” frequency rank: #41,145
“neck” frequency rank: 43001
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	né	neck
Definition	particípio passado do verbo naitre	pescoço

Letter map: né vs neck

Shared letters muted; letters that set né and neck apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

né

4 ch

neck

Part-of-speech tell for né / neck

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: né is averb and neckanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43001, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

né is recorded at frequency rank #1,856, classified as averb. neck is at rank #41,145, tagged as anoun, pronounced /nɛk/.

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 43001, this pair ranks #22,689 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of né vs neck

Shared letters: n. Private to "né": é. Private to "neck": cek.

"né" · 2 letters · shape CV · "neck" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

neck ← enck · ncek · necck · neckk · nekc · nneck

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "né" and "neck" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "né" is a verb and "neck" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "né" vs "neck" - which ranks higher?

"né" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,856 in our Portuguese list, against #41,145 for "neck". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "né" and "neck". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "né" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "neck" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #22,689 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"né" and "neck" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "neck vs nena". 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 #22,689 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.