saudadevssaudarTell them apart

Quick tell: saudade is a noun, saudar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“saudade” is a noun and “saudar” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,350
“saudade” frequency rank
#26,891
“saudar” frequency rank
32241
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature saudade saudar
Definition memória ou recordação grata de pessoas, familiares ou objetos cumprimentar

Letter map: saudade vs saudar

Shared letters muted; letters that set saudade and saudar apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. saudade runs 7 letters (CVVCVCV) against saudar's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
saudade
6 ch
saudar

Part-of-speech tell for saudade / saudar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: saudade is anoun and saudaraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32241, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

saudade is recorded at frequency rank #5,350, classified as anoun, pronounced /saw.ˈda.dʒi/. saudar is at rank #26,891, 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 32241, this pair ranks #35,620 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of saudade vs saudar

Shared letters: adsu. Private to "saudade": e. Private to "saudar": r.

"saudade" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV  ·  "saudar" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • saudade ← asudade · saduade · sauadde · saudadde · saudaed · sauddade · sauddae · ssaudade
  • saudar ← asudar · saduar · sauadr · saudarr · sauddar · saudra · ssaudar · suadar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "saudade" for "saudar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "saudade" is a noun and "saudar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "saudade" or "saudar" show up more?
"saudade" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,350 in our Portuguese list, against #26,891 for "saudar". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "saudade" and "saudar".

  • Full dictionary entry for "saudade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "saudar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,620 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "saudade" and "saudar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "saudar vs Sudan". 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 #35,620 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