safevssueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: safe is a verb, sue is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“safe” is a verb and “sue” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#26,193
“safe” frequency rank
#16,624
“sue” frequency rank
42817
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature safe sue
Definition primeira ou terceira pessoa do presente subjuntivo de safar forma sem gênero de seu ou sua

Letter map: safe vs sue

Shared letters muted; letters that set safe and sue apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
safe
3 ch
sue

Part-of-speech tell for safe / sue

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: safe is averb and sueapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42817, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

safe is recorded at frequency rank #26,193, classified as averb, pronounced /seɪf/, enPR: sāf. sue is at rank #16,624, tagged as apron.

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 42817, this pair ranks #22,900 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of safe vs sue

Shared letters: es. Private to "safe": af. Private to "sue": u.

"safe" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "sue" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • safeasfe · saef · saffe · sfae · ssafe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "safe" and "sue" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "safe" is a verb and "sue" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "safe" or "sue"?
"sue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,624 in our Portuguese list, against #26,193 for "safe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "safe" and "sue". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "safe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,900 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "safe" and "sue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "safe vs Sau". 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 #22,900 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