el

article

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“el” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,143) as an article. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#1,143
frequency rank, Portuguese
1,279
“E” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - o, artigo definido masculino:

Corpus desk

Index PT-el · el · Portuguese

el · rank #1,143 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #1,143
  • LEN-SHORT 2 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 1,279
  • PHOTO-FINISH cuidado

Nearest frequency peer: cuidado (-1 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “el”

Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo

corpus weight

What this shows As barras situam “el” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

el vs em
50% similar
el vs eu
50% similar
el vs en
50% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for el
PropertyValue
Headwordel
LanguagePortuguese
Part of speechArticle
Letters2
Frequency rank#1,143
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “el”

Esta escala corre do núcleo do português quotidiano (esquerda) até o rastro de formas raras (direita).elcai aqui:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

A escala é logarítmica (cada marca ≈ 10× mais rara). Na mesma faixa de raridade aparecem “cuidado” (#1,142), “escrito” (#1,144), “completamente” (#1,141). Entre 1,279 lemas com “E”, “el” fica em #1,143. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for el is neighbouring look-alikes ("em", "eu", …), not just typos; it is anarticle. Frequency #1,143 among 1,279 “E” headwords. Gloss: "o, artigo definido masculino:".

No generated misspelling entries exist for el in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "em", "eu", "en", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct Portuguese form is el, spelled E-L.

Definition

  1. 1
    o, artigo definido masculino:

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

How do you spell "el"?
"el" is spelled E-L.
What does "el" mean?
As an article, "el" means: o, artigo definido masculino:
What words are commonly confused with "el"?
"el" is commonly confused with "em", "eu", "en". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "el" come from?
"el" is a Portuguese word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list