telefone
/te.le.ˈfo.ni/
The verdict
“telefone” is a regularly-used Portuguese word, ranked #1,260 in Portuguese word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,260
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 8
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - dispositivo de comunicação usado para transmitir sons a longa distância inventado por Alexandre Graham Bell
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 | telefone |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /te.le.ˈfo.ni/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #1,260 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “telefone” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for telefone is 8 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /te.le.ˈfo.ni/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,260 in overall Portuguese word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for telefone, with forms such as "etlefone", "teelfone", and "teleffone". 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 2 confusable-pair relationships, "telefonia", "telefonar", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is telefone, spelled T-E-L-E-F-O-N-E.
Definition
- 1dispositivo de comunicação usado para transmitir sons a longa distância inventado por Alexandre Graham Bell
- 2número único com o qual se liga para determinado telefone
- 3golpe aplicado aos ouvidos com as mãos em concha
- 4esguicho manual, acoplado a um tubo ou a um chuveiro, usado para dar ou tomar banho
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: etlefone,teelfone,teleffone,telefnoe,telefoen,telefonne,teleofne,telfeone,tellefone,tleefone,ttelefone
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of telefone - 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 "telefone"?
What does "telefone" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "telefone"?
How do you pronounce "telefone"?
What language does "telefone" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “telefone”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is T-E-L-E-F-O-N-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /te.le.ˈfo.ni/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “telefonia” - see the side-by-side comparison. telefone vs telefonia
- 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.