ré vs ri, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#9,922
“ré” frequency rank: #7,570
“ri” frequency rank: 17492
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ré	ri
Definition	segunda nota musical da escala de dó maior	para, contra

Letter map: ré vs ri

Shared letters muted; letters that set ré and ri apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

ré

2 ch

Role in the sentence - ré and ri

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ré is anoun and riapreposition. On the page they differ by a single letter - é in “ré” becomes i in “ri”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17492, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ré is recorded at frequency rank #9,922, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈRɛ/. ri is at rank #7,570, tagged as aprep.

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 17492, this pair ranks #53,745 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ré vs ri

Shared letters: r. Private to "ré": é. Private to "ri": i.

"ré" · 2 letters · shape CV · "ri" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ré" and "ri" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ré" is a noun and "ri" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "ré" or "ri"?

"ri" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,570 in our Portuguese list, against #9,922 for "ré". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "ré" and "ri". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "ré" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ri" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #53,745 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ré" and "ri" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "rabi vs ri". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #53,745 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.