tchau
/tʃaʊ/
The verdict
“tchau” is a regularly-used Portuguese word, ranked #3,522 in Portuguese word frequency and used as an interjection.
- #3,522
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 6
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - até logo; adeus!
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 | tchau |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | /tʃaʊ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,522 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 6 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tchau” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for tchau is 5 letters long, classified as an interjection, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tʃaʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,522 in overall Portuguese word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "até logo; adeus!".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for tchau, with forms such as "cthau", "tcahu", and "tcchau". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 6 confusable-pair relationships, "tha", "that", "than", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is tchau, spelled T-C-H-A-U.
Definition
- 1até logo; adeus!
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cthau,tcahu,tcchau,tchhau,tchua,thcau,ttchau
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of tchau - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "tchau"?
What does "tchau" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "tchau"?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “tchau”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is T-C-H-A-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /tʃaʊ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “tha” - see the side-by-side comparison. tchau vs tha
- 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.