sivssireWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: si is a pronoun, sire is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“si” is a pronoun and “sire” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#482
“si” frequency rank
#48,121
“sire” frequency rank
48603
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature si sire
Definition refere-se à terceira pessoa, indica reflexividade e é usado após preposição (a, de, em, contra, sobre, por, etc., exceto com) senhor (como forma de tratamento a alguém superior)

Letter map: si vs sire

Shared letters muted; letters that set si and sire apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
si
4 ch
sire

Role in the sentence - si and sire

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: si is apronoun and sireanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “si” sits inside “sire”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48603, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

si is recorded at frequency rank #482, classified as apron, pronounced /ˈsi/. sire is at rank #48,121, 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 48603, this pair ranks #16,572 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of si vs sire

Shared letters: is. Private to "si": -. Private to "sire": er.

"si" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "sire" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sireisre · sier · sirre · srie · ssire

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "si" and "sire" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "si" is a pronoun and "sire" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "si" or "sire" show up more?
"si" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #482 in our Portuguese list, against #48,121 for "sire". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "si" vs "sire" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "si" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sire" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,572 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "si" and "sire" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shire vs sire". 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 #16,572 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