pervspuroConfusable pair

Quick tell: per is a preposition, puro is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#5,775
“per” frequency rank
#3,796
“puro” frequency rank
9571
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature per puro
Definition por sem impurezas; límpido

Letter map: per vs puro

Shared letters muted; letters that set per and puro apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
per
4 ch
puro

Part-of-speech tell for per / puro

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: per is apreposition and puroanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9571, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

per is recorded at frequency rank #5,775, classified as aprep. puro is at rank #3,796, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈpu.ɾu/.

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 9571, this pair ranks #63,811 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of per vs puro

Shared letters: pr. Private to "per": e. Private to "puro": ou.

"per" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "puro" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • puroppuro · pruo · puor · purro · upro

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "per" and "puro" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "per" is a preposition and "puro" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "per" vs "puro" - which ranks higher?
"puro" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,796 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.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "per" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "puro" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,811 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "per" and "puro" 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 #63,811 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