bolavsburlaWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,235
“bola” frequency rank
#45,223
“burla” frequency rank
46458
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bola burla
Definition sólido esférico qualquer (ver esfera) ação de burlar

Letter map: bola vs burla

Shared letters muted; letters that set bola and burla apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. bola runs 4 letters (CVCV) against burla's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
bola
5 ch
burla

Pair insight - bola / burla

bola and burla 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46458, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bola is recorded at frequency rank #1,235, classified as anoun. burla is at rank #45,223, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈbuɾ.lɐ/.

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 46458, this pair ranks #18,837 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bola vs burla

Shared letters: abl. Private to "bola": o. Private to "burla": ru.

"bola" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "burla" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bola ← bbola · bloa · boal · bolla · obla
  • burla ← bburla · brula · bulra · bural · burlla · burrla · ubrla

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "bola" and "burla" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "bola" vs "burla" - which ranks higher?
"bola" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,235 in our Portuguese list, against #45,223 for "burla". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "bola" vs "burla" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bola" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "burla" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,837 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bola" and "burla" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "borla vs burla". 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 #18,837 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