petty vs pretty, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“petty” is an adjective and “pretty” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,960
“petty” frequency rank: #11,522
“pretty” frequency rank: 49482
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	petty	pretty
Definition	pequeno, insignificante	bem, muito

Letter map: petty vs pretty

Shared letters muted; letters that set petty and pretty apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

5 ch

petty

6 ch

pretty

Part-of-speech tell for petty / pretty

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: petty is anadjective and prettyanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49482, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

petty is recorded at frequency rank #37,960, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈpɛti/. pretty is at rank #11,522, tagged as anadv.

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 49482, this pair ranks #15,517 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of petty vs pretty

Shared letters: epty. Private to "petty": -. Private to "pretty": r.

"petty" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "pretty" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

petty ← eptty · pettyy · pety · petyt · ppetty · ptety
pretty ← pertty · ppretty · prettyy · prety · pretyt · prretty · prtety · rpetty

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "petty" for "pretty" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "petty" is an adjective and "pretty" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "petty" or "pretty"?

"pretty" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,522 in our Portuguese list, against #37,960 for "petty". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "petty" and "pretty".

Full dictionary entry for "petty" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "pretty" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #15,517 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"petty" and "pretty" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Petro vs petty". 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 #15,517 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.