the vs these, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“the” is an article and “these” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#93
“the” frequency rank: #18,727
“these” frequency rank: 18820
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	the	these
Definition	o (artigo definido masculino singular)	vide tese

Letter map: the vs these

Shared letters muted; letters that set the and these apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch

the

5 ch

these

Part-of-speech tell for the / these

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: the is anarticle and theseanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “the” sits inside “these”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18820, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

the is recorded at frequency rank #93, classified as anarticle, pronounced /ðə/ (fraco, ou antes de consoante); /ðiː/ (enfático, ou antes de vogal). these is at rank #18,727, 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 18820, this pair ranks #52,074 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of the vs these

Shared letters: eht. Private to "the": -. Private to "these": s.

"the" · 3 letters · shape CCV · "these" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

these ← htese · tehse · thees · thesse · thhese · thsee · tthese

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "the" and "these" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "the" is an article and "these" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "the" or "these" show up more?

"the" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #93 in our Portuguese list, against #18,727 for "these". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "the" and "these".

Full dictionary entry for "the" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "these" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #52,074 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"the" and "these" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tee vs these". 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 #52,074 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.