Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | piojo | plomo |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | (orden Phthiraptera) Cualquiera de más de 3000 especies de insectos ápteros adaptados para parasitar virtualmente todas las especies de mamíferos y aves, cuya sangre consumen, alojándose en el cabello del cuerpo y la cabeza. Su cuerpo está diseñado para este hábitat, con el primer par de patas modificado para permitir la sujeción al cabello. Son extremadamente fértiles, depositando las hembras hasta unos 200 huevos en los 30 días de su vida adulta. Tienen el cuerpo aplanado y de color oscuro o pardoamarillento. La infestación con piojos se denomina pediculosis, y provoca comezón, además de funcionar como vector para otras enfermedades —en particular el tifus— y provocar anemia en casos agudos. | Elemento químico de la tabla periódica de los elementos, con símbolo Pb y número atómico 82, un metal pesado, dúctil, maleable, poco tenaz, de color azul grisáceo, y muy tóxico. |
Letter-by-Letter Comparison
Word Length Comparison: piojo vs plomo
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
piojo and plomo form a confusable pair in the Spanish index, two distinct headwords that writers substitute for each other because they look alike, sound alike, or both. The pair differs by a single letter swap, which is exactly the edit distance at which substitution errors are most common: close enough that the eye skips over the difference, far enough that meaning fully diverges. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40282, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Side-by-side the two words carry different dictionary signatures. piojo is recorded at frequency rank #32,804, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈpjoxo]. plomo is at rank #7,478, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈplomo]. When the two words belong to different parts of speech, sentence grammar alone usually resolves the confusion; when they share a part of speech, only semantic context separates them, which is why the pair earns a dedicated lookup page.
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. Automated spell-checkers cannot flag confusable substitution because every member of the pair is a valid dictionary word, only the writer, or a grammar/context tool, can confirm that the chosen spelling matches the intended meaning. PlainSpell's confusable index exists precisely to make that contextual choice explicit.
Frequency comparison
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "piojo" and "plomo" be used interchangeably?
Where can I learn more about commonly confused words?
Nearby confusable pairs
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