um vs ut, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“um” is an article and “ut” is a conjunction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#12
“um” frequency rank: #39,908
“ut” frequency rank: 39920
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	um	ut
Definition	qualquer	como

Letter map: um vs ut

Shared letters muted; letters that set um and ut apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Grammar separator: um vs ut

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: um is anarticle and utaconjunction. On the page they differ by a single letter - m in “um” becomes t in “ut”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39920, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

um is recorded at frequency rank #12, classified as anarticle, pronounced /ũw/. ut is at rank #39,908, tagged as aconj.

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 39920, this pair ranks #26,256 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of um vs ut

Shared letters: u. Private to "um": m. Private to "ut": t.

"um" · 2 letters · shape VC · "ut" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "um" and "ut" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "um" or "ut" show up more?

"um" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12 in our Portuguese list, against #39,908 for "ut". 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 "um" and "ut". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "um" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ut" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #26,256 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"um" and "ut" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ú vs ut". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #26,256 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.