sorryvssorteWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: sorry is a adjective, sorte is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sorry” is an adjective and “sorte” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14,719
“sorry” frequency rank
#949
“sorte” frequency rank
15668
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sorry sorte
Definition expressa desculpas acaso ou coincidência feliz; contingência favorável

Letter map: sorry vs sorte

Shared letters muted; letters that set sorry and sorte apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. sorry and sorte follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
sorry
5 ch
sorte

Grammar separator: sorry vs sorte

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sorry is anadjective and sorteanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15668, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sorry is recorded at frequency rank #14,719, classified as anadj. sorte is at rank #949, 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 15668, this pair ranks #56,094 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sorry vs sorte

Shared letters: ors. Private to "sorry": y. Private to "sorte": et.

"sorry" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "sorte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sorry ← osrry · sorryy · sory · soryr · srory · ssorry
  • sorte ← osrte · soret · sorrte · sortte · sotre · srote · ssorte

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "sorry" and "sorte" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sorry" is an adjective and "sorte" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "sorry" or "sorte" show up more?
"sorte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #949 in our Portuguese list, against #14,719 for "sorry". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "sorry" and "sorte". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sorry" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sorte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #56,094 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sorry" and "sorte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soir vs sorry". 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 #56,094 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