névsnewsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#1,856
“né” frequency rank
#2,965
“news” frequency rank
4821
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature né news
Definition particípio passado do verbo naitre novidade; notícia

Letter map: né vs news

Shared letters muted; letters that set né and news apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. né runs 2 letters (CV) against news's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

2 ch
né
4 ch
news

Grammar separator: né vs news

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: né is averb and newsanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4821, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

né is recorded at frequency rank #1,856, classified as averb. news is at rank #2,965, tagged as anoun, pronounced /n(j)uːz/, enPR: n(y)o͞oz.

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 4821, this pair ranks #69,954 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of né vs news

Shared letters: n. Private to "né": é. Private to "news": esw.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • news ← enws · nesw · newss · newws · nnews · nwes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "né" and "news" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "né" is a verb and "news" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "né" or "news" show up more?
"né" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,856 in our Portuguese list, against #2,965 for "news". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "né" vs "news" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "né" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "news" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,954 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "né" and "news" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nena vs news". 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 #69,954 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