all vs ao, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“all” is an adjective and “ao” is a contraction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,001
“all” frequency rank: #27
“ao” frequency rank: 2028
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	all	ao
Definition	todo	contração da preposição a com o artigo definido o

Letter map: all vs ao

Shared letters muted; letters that set all and ao apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

all

2 ch

Grammar separator: all vs ao

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: all is anadjective and aoacontraction. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2028, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

all is recorded at frequency rank #2,001, classified as anadj. ao is at rank #27, tagged as acontraction, pronounced /aw/.

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 2028, this pair ranks #73,459 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of all vs ao

Shared letters: a. Private to "all": l. Private to "ao": o.

"all" · 3 letters · shape VCC · "ao" · 2 letters · shape VV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "all" and "ao" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "all" is an adjective and "ao" a contraction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "all" or "ao"?

"ao" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27 in our Portuguese list, against #2,001 for "all". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "all" and "ao". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "all" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ao" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #73,459 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"all" and "ao" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs all". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #73,459 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.