guanvsguióWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: guan is a noun, guió is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“guan” is a noun and “guió” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,044
“guan” frequency rank
#35,068
“guió” frequency rank
84112
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guan guió
Definition (Cracidae) Aves gallináceas del Nuevo Mundo de los géneros Aburria, Chamaepetes, Oreophasis, Penelope, Penelopina y Pipile, de la subfamilia Penelopinae. Sobre todo la Penelope purpurascens. Grafía alternativa de guio. Tercera persona del singular (él, ella, ello; usted, 2.ª persona) del pretérito perfecto simple de indicativo de guiar o de guiarse.

Where the eye mixes guan and guió

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. guan (CVVC) and guió (CVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
guan
4 ch
guió

Visual trap between guan and guió

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: guan is [ˈgwãn] while guió is [ˈgjo]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84112, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guan is recorded at frequency rank #49,044, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈgwãn]. guió is at rank #35,068, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈgjo].

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 84112, this pair ranks #7,395 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of guan vs guió

Shared letters: gu. Private to "guan": an. Private to "guió": ió.

"guan" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "guió" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guan ← gaun · gguan · guann · guna · ugan

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "guan" and "guió" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "guan" is a noun and "guió" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Spanish text, does "guan" or "guió" show up more?
"guió" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,068 in our Spanish list, against #49,044 for "guan". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "guan" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guió" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #7,395 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guan" and "guió" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "grana vs guan". 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 #7,395 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list