se vs sme, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#16
“se” frequency rank: #40,334
“sme” frequency rank: 40350
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	se	sme
Definition	indica hipótese	primeira pessoa do plural do futuro do indicativo do verbo byť

Letter map: se vs sme

Shared letters muted; letters that set se and sme apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch

3 ch

sme

Part-of-speech tell for se / sme

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: se is aconjunction and smeaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40350, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

se is recorded at frequency rank #16, classified as aconj, pronounced /sɨ/. 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 40350, this pair ranks #25,772 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of se vs sme

Shared letters: es. Private to "se": -. Private to "sme": m.

"se" · 2 letters · shape CV · "sme" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "se" for "sme" ever safe?

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

Frequency check: "se" vs "sme" - which ranks higher?

"se" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16 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.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "se" 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 #25,772 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"se" and "sme" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sau vs sme". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #25,772 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.