sabervssábioWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#217
“saber” frequency rank
#8,398
“sábio” frequency rank
8615
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature saber sábio
Definition conhecimento; aquilo que se sabe que tem o poder de discernimento e julgamento em relação ao que é justo e verdadeiro

Letter map: saber vs sábio

Shared letters muted; letters that set saber and sábio apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

5 ch
saber
5 ch
sábio

Role in the sentence - saber and sábio

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: saber is anoun and sábioanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8615, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

saber is recorded at frequency rank #217, classified as anoun, pronounced /sɐ.ˈbeɾ/. sábio is at rank #8,398, tagged as anadj.

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 8615, this pair ranks #65,101 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of saber vs sábio

Shared letters: bs. Private to "saber": aer. Private to "sábio": ioá.

"saber" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "sábio" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • saberasber · sabber · saberr · sabre · saebr · sbaer · ssaber

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "saber" and "sábio" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "saber" is a noun and "sábio" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "saber" or "sábio"?
"saber" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #217 in our Portuguese list, against #8,398 for "sábio". 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 "saber" and "sábio".

  • Full dictionary entry for "saber" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sábio" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #65,101 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "saber" and "sábio" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sábio vs sacro". 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 #65,101 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