ao vs att, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#27
“ao” frequency rank: #17,701
“att” frequency rank: 17728
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ao	att
Definition	contração da preposição a com o artigo definido o	que:

Letter map: ao vs att

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

2 ch

3 ch

att

Grammar separator: ao vs att

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ao is acontraction and attaconjunction. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17728, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ao is recorded at frequency rank #27, classified as acontraction, pronounced /aw/. att is at rank #17,701, tagged as aconj.

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 17728, this pair ranks #53,445 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ao vs att

Shared letters: a. Private to "ao": o. Private to "att": t.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

Frequency check: "ao" vs "att" - which ranks higher?

"ao" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27 in our Portuguese list, against #17,701 for "att". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ao" and "att".

Full dictionary entry for "ao" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "att" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #53,445 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ao" and "att" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "acs vs att". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #53,445 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.