bancovsbardoWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#821
“banco” frequency rank
#39,995
“bardo” frequency rank
40816
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Where the eye mixes banco and bardo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. banco and bardo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
banco
5 ch
bardo

Why the eye confuses banco with bardo

A purely visual mix-up. banco (/ˈbã.ku/) and bardo (/ˈbaɾ.du/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40816, 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/. bardo is at rank #39,995, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈbaɾ.du/.

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 40816, this pair ranks #25,228 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of banco vs bardo

Shared letters: abo. Private to "banco": cn. Private to "bardo": dr.

"banco" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "bardo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • banco ← abnco · bacno · bancco · bannco · banoc · bbanco · bnaco
  • bardo ← abrdo · badro · barddo · barod · barrdo · bbardo · brado

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "banco" for "bardo" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈbã.ku/ versus /ˈbaɾ.du/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "banco" or "bardo"?
"banco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #821 in our Portuguese list, against #39,995 for "bardo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "banco" and "bardo" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "banco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bardo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,228 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "banco" and "bardo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bardo vs brio". 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 #25,228 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