theirvstheyWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: their is a verb, they is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“their” is a verb and “they” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,842
“their” frequency rank
#11,171
“they” frequency rank
19013
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature their they
Definition futuro do verbo abair pronome pessoal de terceira pessoa plural referente a um grupo de pessoas sem especificação de gênero; eles ou elas

Letter map: their vs they

Shared letters muted; letters that set their and they apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
their
4 ch
they

Part-of-speech tell for their / they

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: their is averb and theyapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19013, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

their is recorded at frequency rank #7,842, classified as averb, pronounced /he:r/. 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 19013, this pair ranks #51,848 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of their vs they

Shared letters: eht. Private to "their": ir. Private to "they": y.

"their" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC  ·  "they" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • theirhteir · tehir · theirr · theri · thheir · thier · ttheir
  • theyhtey · tehy · theyy · thhey · thye · tthey

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "their" and "they" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "their" is a verb and "they" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "their" or "they" show up more?
"their" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,842 in our Portuguese list, against #11,171 for "they". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "their" and "they". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "their" 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 #51,848 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "their" 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 #51,848 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