negovsneiWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#15,630
“nego” frequency rank
#27,191
“nei” frequency rank
42821
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nego nei
Definition negro, afrodescendente negar

Letter map: nego vs nei

Shared letters muted; letters that set nego and nei apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. nego runs 4 letters (CVCV) against nei's 3 (CVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
nego
3 ch
nei

Part-of-speech tell for nego / nei

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nego is anoun and neiaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42821, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nego is recorded at frequency rank #15,630, classified as anoun. nei is at rank #27,191, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈnɛ.i/..

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 42821, this pair ranks #22,894 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of nego vs nei

Shared letters: en. Private to "nego": go. Private to "nei": i.

"nego" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "nei" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • nego ← engo · neggo · neog · ngeo · nnego

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "nego" and "nei" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nego" is a noun and "nei" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "nego" or "nei" show up more?
"nego" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,630 in our Portuguese list, against #27,191 for "nei". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "nego" and "nei".

  • Full dictionary entry for "nego" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nei" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,894 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nego" and "nei" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nami vs nei". 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 #22,894 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