sirevssteWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#48,121
“sire” frequency rank
#36,242
“ste” frequency rank
84363
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sire ste
Definition senhor (como forma de tratamento a alguém superior) segunda pessoa do plural do futuro do indicativo do verbo byť

Letter map: sire vs ste

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

4 ch
sire
3 ch
ste

Part-of-speech tell for sire / ste

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sire is anoun and steaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84363, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sire is recorded at frequency rank #48,121, classified as anoun. ste is at rank #36,242, tagged as averb.

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 84363, this pair ranks #795 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of sire vs ste

Shared letters: es. Private to "sire": ir. Private to "ste": t.

"sire" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "ste" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sireisre · sier · sirre · srie · ssire

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sire" for "ste" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sire" is a noun and "ste" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "sire" or "ste" show up more?
"ste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,242 in our Portuguese list, against #48,121 for "sire". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sire" and "ste".

  • Full dictionary entry for "sire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #795 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sire" and "ste" 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 #795 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