seek vs sei, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#39,853
“seek” frequency rank: #118
“sei” frequency rank: 39971
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	seek	sei
Definition	procurar	expressa que aquilo ouvido que foi dito ou afirmado por alguém não é tomado como sendo a verdade

Letter map: seek vs sei

Shared letters muted; letters that set seek and sei apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. seek runs 4 letters (CVVC) against sei's 3 (CVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch

seek

3 ch

sei

Role in the sentence - seek and sei

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: seek is averb and seianintj. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39971, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

seek is recorded at frequency rank #39,853, classified as averb, pronounced /siːk/, /sēk/. 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 39971, this pair ranks #26,198 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of seek vs sei

Shared letters: es. Private to "seek": k. Private to "sei": i.

"seek" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "sei" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

seek ← esek · seekk · sek · seke · sseek

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "seek" for "sei" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "seek" is a verb and "sei" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "seek" or "sei" show up more?

"sei" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #118 in our Portuguese list, against #39,853 for "seek". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

Full dictionary entry for "seek" 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 #26,198 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"seek" and "sei" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "seek vs seno". 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 #26,198 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.