tevstheyWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“te” and “they” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#59
“te” frequency rank
#11,171
“they” frequency rank
11230
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature te they
Definition a ti pronome pessoal de terceira pessoa plural referente a um grupo de pessoas sem especificação de gênero; eles ou elas

Letter map: te vs they

Shared letters muted; letters that set te and they apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
te
4 ch
they

Corpus notes: te and they

te and they are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11230, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

te is recorded at frequency rank #59, classified as apron, pronounced /tɨ/. they is at rank #11,171, tagged as apron.

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 11230, this pair ranks #61,669 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of te vs they

Shared letters: et. Private to "te": -. Private to "they": hy.

"te" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "they" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • theyhtey · tehy · theyy · thhey · thye · tthey

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "te" and "they" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "te" or "they" show up more?
"te" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #59 in our Portuguese list, against #11,171 for "they". 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 "te" and "they". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "te" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "they" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #61,669 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "te" and "they" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teem vs they". 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 #61,669 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