pecarvsperWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pecar is a verb, per is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pecar” is a verb and “per” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#32,725
“pecar” frequency rank
#5,775
“per” frequency rank
38500
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pecar per
Definition cometer pecado por

Letter map: pecar vs per

Shared letters muted; letters that set pecar and per apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
pecar
3 ch
per

Part-of-speech tell for pecar / per

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pecar is averb and perapreposition. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38500, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pecar is recorded at frequency rank #32,725, classified as averb, pronounced /pɨ.ˈkaɾ/. per is at rank #5,775, tagged as aprep.

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 38500, this pair ranks #27,950 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pecar vs per

Shared letters: epr. Private to "pecar": ac. Private to "per": -.

"pecar" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "per" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pecarepcar · pcear · peacr · pecarr · peccar · ppecar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pecar" for "per" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pecar" is a verb and "per" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pecar" or "per" show up more?
"per" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,775 in our Portuguese list, against #32,725 for "pecar". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "pecar" vs "per" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pecar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "per" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,950 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pecar" and "per" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pacas vs pecar". 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 #27,950 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