né vs nim, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#1,856
“né” frequency rank: #42,127
“nim” frequency rank: 43983
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	né	nim
Definition	particípio passado do verbo naitre	expressa não e sim

Letter map: né vs nim

Shared letters muted; letters that set né and nim apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. né runs 2 letters (CV) against nim's 3 (CVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

2 ch

né

3 ch

nim

Role in the sentence - né and nim

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: né is averb and nimanintj. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43983, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

né is recorded at frequency rank #1,856, classified as averb. nim is at rank #42,127, tagged as anintj.

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 43983, this pair ranks #21,584 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of né vs nim

Shared letters: n. Private to "né": é. Private to "nim": im.

"né" · 2 letters · shape CV · "nim" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "né" or "nim" show up more?

"né" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,856 in our Portuguese list, against #42,127 for "nim". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "né" vs "nim" 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 "nim" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #21,584 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"né" and "nim" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nami vs nim". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #21,584 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.