warvswarmWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: war is a verb, warm is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#5,265
“war” frequency rank
#33,231
“warm” frequency rank
38496
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature war warm
Definition primeira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo sein quente

Where the eye mixes war and warm

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

3 ch
war
4 ch
warm

Visual trap between war and warm

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: war is /ˈvaːɐ̯/ while warm is /wɔ:m/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “war” sits inside “warm”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38496, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

war is recorded at frequency rank #5,265, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈvaːɐ̯/. warm is at rank #33,231, tagged as anadj, pronounced /wɔ:m/.

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 38496, this pair ranks #27,955 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of war vs warm

Shared letters: arw. Private to "war": -. Private to "warm": m.

"war" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "warm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • warmawrm · wamr · warmm · warrm · wram · wwarm

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "war" and "warm" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "war" is a verb and "warm" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "war" or "warm" show up more?
"war" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,265 in our Portuguese list, against #33,231 for "warm". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "war" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "warm" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,955 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "war" and "warm" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "warm vs watt". 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 #27,955 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