vaivsvaiarTell them apart

Quick tell: vai is a adjective, vaiar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“vai” is an adjective and “vaiar” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49
“vai” frequency rank
#38,530
“vaiar” frequency rank
38579
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature vai vaiar
Definition relativo aos vais dar vaias; apupar

Letter map: vai vs vaiar

Shared letters muted; letters that set vai and vaiar apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. vai runs 3 letters (CVV) against vaiar's 5 (CVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
vai
5 ch
vaiar

Part-of-speech tell for vai / vaiar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: vai is anadjective and vaiaraverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “vai” sits inside “vaiar”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38579, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

vai is recorded at frequency rank #49, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈvaj/. vaiar is at rank #38,530, tagged as averb.

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 38579, this pair ranks #27,840 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of vai vs vaiar

Shared letters: aiv. Private to "vai": -. Private to "vaiar": r.

"vai" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "vaiar" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • vaiar ← aviar · vaair · vaiarr · vaira · viaar · vvaiar

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "vai" and "vaiar" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "vai" is an adjective and "vaiar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "vai" or "vaiar" show up more?
"vai" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #49 in our Portuguese list, against #38,530 for "vaiar". 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 "vai" and "vaiar".

  • Full dictionary entry for "vai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "vaiar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,840 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "vai" and "vaiar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "vaiar vs velar". 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 #27,840 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