windvswiseWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: wind is a noun, wise is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“wind” is a noun and “wise” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,191
“wind” frequency rank
#35,403
“wise” frequency rank
57594
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wind wise
Definition vento sábio

Letter map: wind vs wise

Shared letters muted; letters that set wind and wise apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
wind
4 ch
wise

Part-of-speech tell for wind / wise

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wind is anoun and wiseanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57594, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wind is recorded at frequency rank #22,191, classified as anoun. wise is at rank #35,403, tagged as anadj, pronounced /waɪz/.

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 57594, this pair ranks #9,245 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of wind vs wise

Shared letters: iw. Private to "wind": dn. Private to "wise": es.

"wind" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "wise" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • windiwnd · widn · windd · winnd · wnid · wwind
  • wiseiwse · wies · wisse · wsie · wwise

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "wind" for "wise" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wind" is a noun and "wise" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "wind" or "wise" show up more?
"wind" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,191 in our Portuguese list, against #35,403 for "wise". 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 "wind" and "wise". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "wind" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wise" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #9,245 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wind" and "wise" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wir vs wise". 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 #9,245 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