serávssetaTell them apart

Quick tell: será is a verb, seta is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“será” is a verb and “seta” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#143
“será” frequency rank
#18,453
“seta” frequency rank
18596
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature será seta
Definition terceira pessoa do singular do futuro do presente do indicativo do verbo ser flecha

Where the eye mixes será and seta

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
será
4 ch
seta

Look-alike desk: será vs seta

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: será is /se.ˈɾa/ while seta is /ˈsɛ.tɐ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18596, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

será is recorded at frequency rank #143, classified as averb, pronounced /se.ˈɾa/. seta is at rank #18,453, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɛ.tɐ/.

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 18596, this pair ranks #52,353 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of será vs seta

Shared letters: es. Private to "será": . Private to "seta": at.

"será" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "seta" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • setaesta · setta · sseta · stea

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "será" for "seta" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "será" is a verb and "seta" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "será" or "seta" show up more?
"será" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #143 in our Portuguese list, against #18,453 for "seta". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "será" and "seta" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "será" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "seta" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #52,353 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "será" and "seta" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "senda vs seta". 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 #52,353 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