quevsquerWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: que is a adverb, quer is a conjunction, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“que” is an adverb and “quer” is a conjunction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4
“que” frequency rank
#129
“quer” frequency rank
133
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature que quer
Definition quanto, quão grande, qual de ou

Letter map: que vs quer

Shared letters muted; letters that set que and quer apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
que
4 ch
quer

Part-of-speech tell for que / quer

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: que is anadverb and queraconjunction. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “que” sits inside “quer”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 133, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

que is recorded at frequency rank #4, classified as anadv, pronounced /ˈkɨ/. quer is at rank #129, tagged as aconj.

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 133, this pair ranks #75,526 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of que vs quer

Shared letters: equ. Private to "que": -. Private to "quer": r.

"que" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "quer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • querqeur · qquer · querr · qure · uqer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "que" and "quer" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "que" is an adverb and "quer" a conjunction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "que" vs "quer" - which ranks higher?
"que" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4 in our Portuguese list, against #129 for "quer". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "que" and "quer".

  • Full dictionary entry for "que" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "quer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #75,526 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "que" and "quer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "quer vs quit". 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 #75,526 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