pañosvspintosWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“paños” and “pintos” are a confusable Spanish pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#26,556
“paños” frequency rank
#39,922
“pintos” frequency rank
66478
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paños pintos
Definition Cualquier género de vestiduras. Forma del plural de pinto.

Where the eye mixes paños and pintos

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. paños runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against pintos's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
paños
6 ch
pintos

Look-alike desk: paños vs pintos

A purely visual mix-up. paños ([ˈpaɲos]) and pintos ([ˈpĩn̪t̪os]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66478, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paños is recorded at frequency rank #26,556, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈpaɲos]. pintos is at rank #39,922, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈpĩn̪t̪os].

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 66478, this pair ranks #39,762 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of paños vs pintos

Shared letters: ops. Private to "paños": añ. Private to "pintos": int.

"paños" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "pintos" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pintos ← ipntos · pinntos · pinots · pintoss · pintso · pinttos · pitnos · pnitos

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "paños" for "pintos" ever safe?
No. They are said differently ([ˈpaɲos] versus [ˈpĩn̪t̪os]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Spanish text, does "paños" or "pintos" show up more?
"paños" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,556 in our Spanish list, against #39,922 for "pintos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "paños" and "pintos" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "paños" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pintos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,762 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paños" and "pintos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pintos vs prontos". 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 #39,762 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