bodyvsbomConfusable pair

Quick tell: body is a noun, bom is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“body” is a noun and “bom” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,578
“body” frequency rank
#96
“bom” frequency rank
8674
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature body bom
Definition corpo que corresponde plenamente ao que é exigido, desejado ou esperado quanto à sua natureza, adequação, função, eficácia, funcionamento etc. (falando de ser ou coisa)

Letter map: body vs bom

Shared letters muted; letters that set body and bom apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
body
3 ch
bom

Part-of-speech tell for body / bom

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: body is anoun and bomanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8674, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

body is recorded at frequency rank #8,578, classified as anoun. bom is at rank #96, tagged as anadj.

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 8674, this pair ranks #65,012 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of body vs bom

Shared letters: bo. Private to "body": dy. Private to "bom": m.

"body" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "bom" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bodybbody · bdoy · boddy · bodyy · boyd · obdy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "body" for "bom" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "body" is a noun and "bom" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "body" or "bom"?
"bom" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #96 in our Portuguese list, against #8,578 for "body". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "body" vs "bom" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "body" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bom" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #65,012 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "body" and "bom" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "body vs busy". 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 #65,012 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