teimavstemWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#34,488
“teima” frequency rank
#33
“tem” frequency rank
34521
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature teima tem
Definition ato ou efeito de teimar; teimosia: terceira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo ter

Letter map: teima vs tem

Shared letters muted; letters that set teima and tem apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
teima
3 ch
tem

Part-of-speech tell for teima / tem

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: teima is anoun and temaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34521, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

teima is recorded at frequency rank #34,488, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈtɐj.mɐ/. tem is at rank #33, 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 34521, this pair ranks #32,721 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of teima vs tem

Shared letters: emt. Private to "teima": ai. Private to "tem": -.

"teima" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "tem" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • teimaetima · teiam · teimma · temia · tiema · tteima

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "teima" and "tem" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "teima" is a noun and "tem" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "teima" vs "tem" - which ranks higher?
"tem" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33 in our Portuguese list, against #34,488 for "teima". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "teima" and "tem".

  • Full dictionary entry for "teima" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #32,721 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "teima" and "tem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teima vs trema". 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 #32,721 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