who

pron

The verdict

“who” sits in 11 confusable pairs (corpus #5,055) as a pronoun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#5,055
frequency rank, Portuguese
110
“W” headwords
11
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - que; o qual, os quais, a qual, as quais

Corpus desk

Index PT-who · who · Portuguese

who · rank #5,055 · 0 variants · 11 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #5,055
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-MID 11 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 110
  • PHOTO-FINISH voltado

Nearest frequency peer: voltado (-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 “who”

Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo

corpus weight

What this shows As barras situam “who” 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).

who vs wo
67% similar
who vs why
67% similar
who vs wir
33% similar

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

Key facts for who
PropertyValue
Headwordwho
LanguagePortuguese
Part of speechPronoun
Letters3
Frequency rank#5,055
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs11
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “who”

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

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

Os ticks avançam em logaritmo; cada um é da ordem de dez vezes mais raro. Na mesma faixa de raridade aparecem “voltado” (#5,054), “administrativo” (#5,056), “viola” (#5,052). Entre 110 lemas com “W”, “who” fica em #5,055. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for who is neighbouring look-alikes ("wo", "why", …), not just typos; it is apronoun. Frequency #5,055 among 110 “W” headwords. Gloss: "que; o qual, os quais, a qual, as quais".

No generated misspelling entries exist for who in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 11 confusable-pair relationships, "wo", "why", "wir", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct Portuguese form is who, spelled W-H-O.

Definition

  1. 1
    que; o qual, os quais, a qual, as quais

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how who appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. A student who studies hard gets high grades.

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 "who"?
"who" is spelled W-H-O.
What does "who" mean?
As a pronoun, "who" means: que; o qual, os quais, a qual, as quais
What words are commonly confused with "who"?
"who" is commonly confused with "wo", "why", "wir". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "who" come from?
"who" is a Portuguese word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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.

Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "who", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked Portuguese headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list