passevspraiseConfusable pair

Which to use

“passe” and “praise” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,337
“passe” frequency rank
#44,057
“praise” frequency rank
46394
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature passe praise
Definition licença, permissão louvor

Where the eye mixes passe and praise

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. passe runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against praise's 6 (CCVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
passe
6 ch
praise

Why the eye confuses passe with praise

A purely visual mix-up. passe (/ˈpa.sɨ/) and praise (/pɹeɪz/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46394, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passe is recorded at frequency rank #2,337, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpa.sɨ/. praise is at rank #44,057, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹeɪz/.

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 46394, this pair ranks #18,905 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of passe vs praise

Shared letters: aeps. Private to "passe": -. Private to "praise": ir.

"passe" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "praise" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • passe ← apsse · pase · pases · ppasse · psase
  • praise ← parise · ppraise · praies · praisse · prasie · priase · prraise · rpaise

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "passe" for "praise" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈpa.sɨ/ versus /pɹeɪz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "passe" or "praise"?
"passe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,337 in our Portuguese list, against #44,057 for "praise". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "passe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "praise" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,905 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "passe" and "praise" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "praise vs promise". 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 #18,905 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