Sau vs sua, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#49,171
“Sau” frequency rank: #32
“sua” frequency rank: 49203
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Sau	sua
Definition	porco	que tem você como objeto

Letter map: Sau vs sua

Shared letters muted; letters that set Sau and sua apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

sua

Part-of-speech tell for Sau / sua

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Sau is anoun and suaanadjective. On the page they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (au ↔ ua) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49203, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Sau is recorded at frequency rank #49,171, classified as anoun, pronounced /zaʊ̯/. sua is at rank #32, 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 49203, this pair ranks #15,856 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Sau vs sua

Shared letters: asu. Private to "Sau": -. Private to "sua": -.

"Sau" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "sua" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Sau" for "sua" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Sau" is a noun and "sua" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "Sau" or "sua" show up more?

"sua" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32 in our Portuguese list, against #49,171 for "Sau". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "Sau" vs "sua" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "Sau" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "sua" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #15,856 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Sau" and "sua" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sau vs soap". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #15,856 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.