s vs sme, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“s” is a symbol and “sme” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#511
“s” frequency rank: #40,334
“sme” frequency rank: 40845
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	s	sme
Definition	símbolo de segundo	primeira pessoa do plural do futuro do indicativo do verbo byť

Letter map: s vs sme

Shared letters muted; letters that set s and sme apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

1 ch

3 ch

sme

Part-of-speech tell for s / sme

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: s is asymbol and smeaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “s” sits inside “sme”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40845, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

s is recorded at frequency rank #511, classified as asymbol. sme is at rank #40,334, tagged as averb.

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 40845, this pair ranks #25,194 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of s vs sme

Shared letters: s. Private to "s": -. Private to "sme": em.

"s" · 1 letters · shape C · "sme" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "s" and "sme" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "s" is a symbol and "sme" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "s" or "sme" show up more?

"s" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #511 in our Portuguese list, against #40,334 for "sme". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "s" and "sme".

Full dictionary entry for "s" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "sme" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #25,194 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"s" and "sme" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sau vs sme". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #25,194 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.