badvsbladeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“bad” and “blade” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#4,699
“bad” frequency rank
#20,796
“blade” frequency rank
25495
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bad blade
Definition banho lâmina

Letter map: bad vs blade

Shared letters muted; letters that set bad and blade apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
bad
5 ch
blade

Spelling & dictionary notes on bad vs blade

bad and blade are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25495, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bad is recorded at frequency rank #4,699, classified as anoun, pronounced /bɑt/. blade is at rank #20,796, tagged as anoun.

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 25495, this pair ranks #43,799 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of bad vs blade

Shared letters: abd. Private to "bad": -. Private to "blade": el.

"bad" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "blade" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bladebblade · bladde · blaed · bldae · bllade · lbade

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "bad" and "blade" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "bad" or "blade" show up more?
"bad" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,699 in our Portuguese list, against #20,796 for "blade". 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 "bad" and "blade".

  • Full dictionary entry for "bad" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "blade" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,799 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bad" and "blade" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "beldade vs blade". 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 #43,799 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