am vs apo, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“am” is an article and “apo” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,705
“am” frequency rank: #45,685
“apo” frequency rank: 48390
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	am	apo
Definition	o / a usado com substantivos masculinos no caso nominativo singular quando a palavra começar com as letra b, f, m, p	atar, juntar, ligar.

Letter map: am vs apo

Shared letters muted; letters that set am and apo apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. am runs 2 letters (VC) against apo's 3 (VCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

2 ch

3 ch

apo

Part-of-speech tell for am / apo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: am is anarticle and apoaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48390, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

am is recorded at frequency rank #2,705, classified as anarticle. apo is at rank #45,685, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈa.poː/..

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 48390, this pair ranks #16,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of am vs apo

Shared letters: a. Private to "am": m. Private to "apo": op.

"am" · 2 letters · shape VC · "apo" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "am" for "apo" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "am" is an article and "apo" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "am" or "apo" show up more?

"am" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,705 in our Portuguese list, against #45,685 for "apo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "am" and "apo". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "am" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "apo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #16,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"am" and "apo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs apo". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #16,784 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.