adovsaldaTell them apart

Which to use

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

#31,628
“ado” frequency rank
#30,810
“alda” frequency rank
62438
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ado alda
Definition a fazer vaga, onda marinha

Letter map: ado vs alda

Shared letters muted; letters that set ado and alda apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ado runs 3 letters (VCV) against alda's 4 (VCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ado
4 ch
alda

Spelling & dictionary notes on ado vs alda

ado and alda are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62438, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ado is recorded at frequency rank #31,628, classified as anoun. alda is at rank #30,810, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈal.da/.

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 62438, this pair ranks #6,665 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ado vs alda

Shared letters: ad. Private to "ado": o. Private to "alda": l.

"ado" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "alda" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alda ← adla · alad · aldda · allda · lada

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ado" and "alda" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ado" or "alda" show up more?
"alda" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,810 in our Portuguese list, against #31,628 for "ado". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "ado" and "alda". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ado" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "alda" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,665 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ado" and "alda" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs ado". 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 #6,665 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