sortevssteWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#949
“sorte” frequency rank
#36,242
“ste” frequency rank
37191
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sorte ste
Definition acaso ou coincidência feliz; contingência favorável segunda pessoa do plural do futuro do indicativo do verbo byť

Letter map: sorte vs ste

Shared letters muted; letters that set sorte and ste apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
sorte
3 ch
ste

Part-of-speech tell for sorte / ste

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sorte is anoun and steaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37191, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sorte is recorded at frequency rank #949, 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 37191, this pair ranks #29,477 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sorte vs ste

Shared letters: est. Private to "sorte": or. Private to "ste": -.

"sorte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "ste" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sorteosrte · soret · sorrte · sortte · sotre · srote · ssorte

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "sorte" and "ste" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sorte" is a noun and "ste" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "sorte" or "ste"?
"sorte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #949 in our Portuguese list, against #36,242 for "ste". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "sorte" 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 #29,477 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sorte" and "ste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sau vs ste". 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 #29,477 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