alôvsautoWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#4,874
“alô” frequency rank
#1,421
“auto” frequency rank
6295
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alô auto
Definition lá, alá, podendo indicar um lugar, um tempo, mais afastado que lá solenidade; ação pública

Letter map: alô vs auto

Shared letters muted; letters that set alô and auto apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
alô
4 ch
auto

Part-of-speech tell for alô / auto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alô is anadverb and autoanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6295, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alô is recorded at frequency rank #4,874, classified as anadv. auto is at rank #1,421, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈaw.tu/.

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 6295, this pair ranks #68,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of alô vs auto

Shared letters: a. Private to "alô": . Private to "auto": otu.

"alô" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "auto" · 4 letters · shape VVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • autoatuo · auot · autto · uato

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "alô" and "auto" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alô" is an adverb and "auto" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "alô" or "auto"?
"auto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,421 in our Portuguese list, against #4,874 for "alô". 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 "alô" and "auto".

  • Full dictionary entry for "alô" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "auto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #68,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alô" and "auto" 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 #68,161 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