pedirvspudorTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#714
“pedir” frequency rank
#24,438
“pudor” frequency rank
25152
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pedir pudor
Definition solicitar sentimento de vergonha, timidez, mal-estar produzido por tudo o que é contrário à modéstia

Where the eye mixes pedir and pudor

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pedir and pudor follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
pedir
5 ch
pudor

Look-alike desk: pedir vs pudor

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pedir is /pɨ.ˈdiɾ/ while pudor is /pu.ˈdoɾ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25152, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pedir is recorded at frequency rank #714, classified as averb, pronounced /pɨ.ˈdiɾ/. pudor is at rank #24,438, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pu.ˈdoɾ/.

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 25152, this pair ranks #44,230 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pedir vs pudor

Shared letters: dpr. Private to "pedir": ei. Private to "pudor": ou.

"pedir" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "pudor" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pedir ← epdir · pdeir · peddir · pedirr · pedri · peidr · ppedir
  • pudor ← pduor · ppudor · puddor · pudorr · pudro · puodr · updor

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pedir" and "pudor" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pedir" is a verb and "pudor" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pedir" or "pudor" show up more?
"pedir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #714 in our Portuguese list, against #24,438 for "pudor". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "pedir" and "pudor" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pedir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pudor" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #44,230 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pedir" and "pudor" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pudor vs puxo". 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 #44,230 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