pervspernaWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#5,775
“per” frequency rank
#3,098
“perna” frequency rank
8873
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature per perna
Definition por um dos membros posteriores humanos

Letter map: per vs perna

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

3 ch
per
5 ch
perna

Part-of-speech tell for per / perna

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: per is apreposition and pernaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “per” sits inside “perna”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8873, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

per is recorded at frequency rank #5,775, classified as aprep. perna is at rank #3,098, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɛrnɜ/.

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 8873, this pair ranks #64,750 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of per vs perna

Shared letters: epr. Private to "per": -. Private to "perna": an.

"per" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "perna" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pernaeprna · penra · peran · pernna · perrna · pperna · prena

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "per" for "perna" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "per" is a preposition and "perna" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "per" vs "perna" - which ranks higher?
"perna" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,098 in our Portuguese list, against #5,775 for "per". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "per" and "perna".

  • Full dictionary entry for "per" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "perna" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #64,750 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "per" and "perna" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "per vs pix". 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 #64,750 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