alôvsasiloTell them apart

Quick tell: alô is a adverb, asilo is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alô” is an adverb and “asilo” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,874
“alô” frequency rank
#9,000
“asilo” frequency rank
13874
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alô asilo
Definition lá, alá, podendo indicar um lugar, um tempo, mais afastado que lá local onde escondiam-se criminosos

Letter map: alô vs asilo

Shared letters muted; letters that set alô and asilo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
alô
5 ch
asilo

Part-of-speech tell for alô / asilo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alô is anadverb and asiloanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13874, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alô is recorded at frequency rank #4,874, classified as anadv. asilo is at rank #9,000, tagged as anoun, pronounced /a.ˈzi.lu/.

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 13874, this pair ranks #58,341 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of alô vs asilo

Shared letters: al. Private to "alô": ô. Private to "asilo": ios.

"alô" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "asilo" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • asiloaislo · asillo · asiol · aslio · assilo · sailo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "alô" for "asilo" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alô" is an adverb and "asilo" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "alô" or "asilo" show up more?
"alô" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,874 in our Portuguese list, against #9,000 for "asilo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "alô" vs "asilo" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "alô" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "asilo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #58,341 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alô" and "asilo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs alô". 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 #58,341 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