sea vs sem, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“sea” is a noun and “sem” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,925
“sea” frequency rank: #69
“sem” frequency rank: 9994
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	sea	sem
Definition	mar.	indicativa de carência ou ausência

Letter map: sea vs sem

Shared letters muted; letters that set sea and sem apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

sea

3 ch

sem

Role in the sentence - sea and sem

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sea is anoun and semapreposition. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “sea” becomes m in “sem”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9994, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sea is recorded at frequency rank #9,925, classified as anoun, pronounced ]. sem is at rank #69, tagged as aprep, pronounced /sɐ̃j̃/.

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 9994, this pair ranks #63,247 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of sea vs sem

Shared letters: es. Private to "sea": a. Private to "sem": m.

"sea" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "sem" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sea" for "sem" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sea" is a noun and "sem" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "sea" or "sem"?

"sem" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #69 in our Portuguese list, against #9,925 for "sea". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "sea" and "sem". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "sea" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "sem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #63,247 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"sea" and "sem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sea vs soap". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #63,247 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.