allavsaraTell them apart

Quick tell: alla is a contraction, ara is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alla” is a contraction and “ara” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,313
“alla” frequency rank
#21,083
“ara” frequency rank
57396
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alla ara
Definition na altar

Letter map: alla vs ara

Shared letters muted; letters that set alla and ara apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
alla
3 ch
ara

Part-of-speech tell for alla / ara

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alla is acontraction and araanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alla is recorded at frequency rank #36,313, classified as acontraction. ara is at rank #21,083, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈa.ɾɐ/.

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 57396, this pair ranks #9,374 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of alla vs ara

Shared letters: a. Private to "alla": l. Private to "ara": r.

"alla" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "ara" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • allaalal · lala

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "alla" for "ara" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alla" is a contraction and "ara" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "alla" vs "ara" - which ranks higher?
"ara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,083 in our Portuguese list, against #36,313 for "alla". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "alla" vs "ara" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "alla" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ara" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #9,374 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alla" and "ara" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alla vs alles". 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 #9,374 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