secavsselvaTell them apart

Which to use

“seca” and “selva” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,805
“seca” frequency rank
#7,695
“selva” frequency rank
10500
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature seca selva
Definition período sem chuva bioma florestal caracterizado por vegetação densa e de grande biodiversidade

Letter map: seca vs selva

Shared letters muted; letters that set seca and selva apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
seca
5 ch
selva

Corpus notes: seca and selva

seca and selva are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10500, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

seca is recorded at frequency rank #2,805, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɛ.kɐ/. selva is at rank #7,695, tagged as anoun.

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 10500, this pair ranks #62,585 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of seca vs selva

Shared letters: aes. Private to "seca": c. Private to "selva": lv.

"seca" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "selva" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • secaesca · scea · seac · secca · sseca
  • selvaeslva · selav · sellva · selvva · sevla · sleva · sselva

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "seca" for "selva" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "seca" or "selva" show up more?
"seca" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,805 in our Portuguese list, against #7,695 for "selva". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "seca" vs "selva" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "seca" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "selva" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,585 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "seca" and "selva" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "selva vs senda". 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 #62,585 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