undervsunirWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: under is a preposition, unir is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“under” is a preposition and “unir” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,833
“under” frequency rank
#4,962
“unir” frequency rank
13795
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature under unir
Definition debaixo de, embaixo de: juntar

Letter map: under vs unir

Shared letters muted; letters that set under and unir apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
under
4 ch
unir

Part-of-speech tell for under / unir

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: under is apreposition and uniraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13795, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

under is recorded at frequency rank #8,833, classified as aprep. unir is at rank #4,962, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈu.niɾ/.

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 13795, this pair ranks #58,440 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of under vs unir

Shared letters: nru. Private to "under": de. Private to "unir": i.

"under" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "unir" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • undernuder · udner · undder · underr · undre · unedr · unnder
  • unirnuir · uinr · unirr · unnir · unri

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "under" and "unir" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "under" is a preposition and "unir" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "under" vs "unir" - which ranks higher?
"unir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,962 in our Portuguese list, against #8,833 for "under". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "under" and "unir".

  • Full dictionary entry for "under" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "unir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #58,440 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "under" and "unir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "under vs unser". 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 #58,440 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