secovsseiWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: seco is a adjective, sei is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“seco” is an adjective and “sei” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,763
“seco” frequency rank
#118
“sei” frequency rank
4881
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature seco sei
Definition sem água ou humidade; enxuto; árido expressa que aquilo ouvido que foi dito ou afirmado por alguém não é tomado como sendo a verdade

Letter map: seco vs sei

Shared letters muted; letters that set seco and sei apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
seco
3 ch
sei

Part-of-speech tell for seco / sei

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: seco is anadjective and seianintj. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4881, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

seco is recorded at frequency rank #4,763, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈse.ku/. sei is at rank #118, tagged as anintj.

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 4881, this pair ranks #69,879 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of seco vs sei

Shared letters: es. Private to "seco": co. Private to "sei": i.

"seco" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "sei" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • secoesco · sceo · secco · seoc · sseco

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "seco" and "sei" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "seco" is an adjective and "sei" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "seco" vs "sei" - which ranks higher?
"sei" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #118 in our Portuguese list, against #4,763 for "seco". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "seco" vs "sei" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "seco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sei" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,879 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "seco" and "sei" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "seco vs sueño". 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 #69,879 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