adovsaladoTell them apart

Quick tell: ado is a noun, alado is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ado” is a noun and “alado” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,628
“ado” frequency rank
#47,708
“alado” frequency rank
79336
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ado alado
Definition a fazer que tem asas

Letter map: ado vs alado

Shared letters muted; letters that set ado and alado apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. ado runs 3 letters (VCV) against alado's 5 (VCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ado
5 ch
alado

Role in the sentence - ado and alado

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ado is anoun and aladoanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ado” sits inside “alado”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79336, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ado is recorded at frequency rank #31,628, classified as anoun. alado is at rank #47,708, tagged as anadj, pronounced /a.ˈla.du/.

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 79336, this pair ranks #1,515 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ado vs alado

Shared letters: ado. Private to "ado": -. Private to "alado": l.

"ado" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "alado" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alado ← aaldo · aladdo · alaod · aldao · allado · laado

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ado" and "alado" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ado" is a noun and "alado" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ado" or "alado" show up more?
"ado" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,628 in our Portuguese list, against #47,708 for "alado". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ado" and "alado".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ado" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "alado" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,515 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ado" and "alado" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alado vs álamo". 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 #1,515 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