úvsuaiTell them apart

Quick tell: ú is a adverb, uai is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ú” is an adverb and “uai” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,175
“ú” frequency rank
#37,566
“uai” frequency rank
81741
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ú uai
Definition onde expressa surpresa, espanto ou suscita dúvida

Letter map: ú vs uai

Shared letters muted; letters that set ú and uai apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

1 ch
ú
3 ch
uai

Part-of-speech tell for ú / uai

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ú is anadverb and uaianintj. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81741, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ú is recorded at frequency rank #44,175, classified as anadv. uai is at rank #37,566, tagged as anintj.

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 81741, this pair ranks #1,124 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ú vs uai

Shared letters: none. Private to "ú": ú. Private to "uai": aiu.

"ú" · 1 letters · shape V  ·  "uai" · 3 letters · shape VVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ú" for "uai" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ú" is an adverb and "uai" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ú" or "uai"?
"uai" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,566 in our Portuguese list, against #44,175 for "ú". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "ú" and "uai". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ú" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "uai" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,124 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ú" and "uai" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ú vs UBS". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,124 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