acessovsadesãoConfusable pair

Which to use

“acesso” and “adesão” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#486
“acesso” frequency rank
#6,364
“adesão” frequency rank
6850
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acesso adesão
Definition entrada (de), passagem (para) ato, processo ou efeito de aderir

Where the eye mixes acesso and adesão

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. acesso (VCVCCV) and adesão (VCVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
acesso
6 ch
adesão

Why the eye confuses acesso with adesão

A purely visual mix-up. acesso (/ɐ.ˈsɛ.su/) and adesão (/ɐ.dɨ.ˈzɐ̃w̃/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6850, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

acesso is recorded at frequency rank #486, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɐ.ˈsɛ.su/. adesão is at rank #6,364, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɐ.dɨ.ˈzɐ̃w̃/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 6850, this pair ranks #67,465 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of acesso vs adesão

Shared letters: aeos. Private to "acesso": c. Private to "adesão": dã.

"acesso" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "adesão" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acesso ← accesso · acesos · acseso · aecsso · caesso

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "acesso" and "adesão" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ɐ.ˈsɛ.su/ versus /ɐ.dɨ.ˈzɐ̃w̃/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "acesso" or "adesão" show up more?
"acesso" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #486 in our Portuguese list, against #6,364 for "adesão". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "acesso" and "adesão" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "acesso" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adesão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #67,465 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acesso" and "adesão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aceno vs acesso". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #67,465 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list