negovsnemWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: nego is a noun, nem is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#15,630
“nego” frequency rank
#121
“nem” frequency rank
15751
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nego nem
Definition negro, afrodescendente não

Letter map: nego vs nem

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

4 ch
nego
3 ch
nem

Part-of-speech tell for nego / nem

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nego is anoun and nemanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15751, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nego is recorded at frequency rank #15,630, classified as anoun. nem is at rank #121, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈnɐ̃j̃/.

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 15751, this pair ranks #55,995 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of nego vs nem

Shared letters: en. Private to "nego": go. Private to "nem": m.

"nego" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "nem" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "nego" and "nem" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nego" is a noun and "nem" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "nego" vs "nem" - which ranks higher?
"nem" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #121 in our Portuguese list, against #15,630 for "nego". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "nego" and "nem". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "nego" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,995 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nego" and "nem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nego 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 #55,995 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