bancovsbankWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#821
“banco” frequency rank
#9,803
“bank” frequency rank
10624
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature banco bank
Definition móvel para sentar, sem encosto se for individual, em madeira, cortiça, plástico, vime ou ferro; mocho; escabelo: banco

Where the eye mixes banco and bank

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
banco
4 ch
bank

Look-alike desk: banco vs bank

A purely visual mix-up. banco (/ˈbã.ku/) and bank (/bɑŋk/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10624, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

banco is recorded at frequency rank #821, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈbã.ku/. bank is at rank #9,803, tagged as anoun, pronounced /bɑŋk/.

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 10624, this pair ranks #62,420 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of banco vs bank

Shared letters: abn. Private to "banco": co. Private to "bank": k.

"banco" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "bank" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bancoabnco · bacno · bancco · bannco · banoc · bbanco · bnaco
  • bankabnk · bakn · bankk · bannk · bbank · bnak

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "banco" and "bank" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ˈbã.ku/ versus /bɑŋk/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "banco" vs "bank" - which ranks higher?
"banco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #821 in our Portuguese list, against #9,803 for "bank". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "banco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bank" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,420 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "banco" and "bank" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bank vs baús". 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 #62,420 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