boy
/bɔɪ/
The verdict
“boy” is a regularly-used Portuguese word, ranked #3,884 in Portuguese word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,884
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - garoto, rapaz, jovem
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | boy |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɔɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,884 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “boy” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for boy is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɔɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,884 in overall Portuguese word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
boy doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BR", "but", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct Portuguese form is boy, spelled B-O-Y.
Definition
- 1garoto, rapaz, jovem
- 2menino
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “boy”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is B-O-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɔɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. boy vs by
- Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.