podervspodreWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: poder is a noun, podre is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“poder” is a noun and “podre” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#260
“poder” frequency rank
#9,388
“podre” frequency rank
9648
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature poder podre
Definition autoridade ou domínio que está em decomposição

Where the eye mixes poder and podre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
poder
5 ch
podre

Look-alike desk: poder vs podre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: poder is /pu.ˈdeɾ/ while podre is /ˈpo.dɾɨ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (er ↔ re) - a transposition the eye reads straight past, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9648, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

poder is recorded at frequency rank #260, classified as anoun, pronounced /pu.ˈdeɾ/. podre is at rank #9,388, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈpo.dɾɨ/.

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 9648, this pair ranks #63,719 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of poder vs podre

Shared letters: deopr. Private to "poder": -. Private to "podre": -.

"poder" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "podre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poderopder · pdoer · podder · poderr · poedr · ppoder
  • podreopdre · pdore · poddre · podrre · porde · ppodre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "poder" for "podre" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "poder" is a noun and "podre" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "poder" or "podre" show up more?
"poder" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #260 in our Portuguese list, against #9,388 for "podre". 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 "poder" and "podre" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "poder" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "podre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,719 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "poder" and "podre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "podre vs puré". 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 #63,719 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