cantãovscentoConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#29,259
“cantão” frequency rank
#2,620
“cento” frequency rank
31879
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cantão cento
Definition região administrativa conjunto de cem unidades de alguma coisa

Letter map: cantão vs cento

Shared letters muted; letters that set cantão and cento apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. cantão runs 6 letters (CVCCVV) against cento's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
cantão
5 ch
cento

Pair insight - cantão / cento

cantão and cento 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 31879, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cantão is recorded at frequency rank #29,259, classified as anoun. cento is at rank #2,620, 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 31879, this pair ranks #36,077 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cantão vs cento

Shared letters: cnot. Private to "cantão": aã. Private to "cento": e.

"cantão" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "cento" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cento ← ccento · cennto · cenot · centto · cetno · cneto · ecnto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cantão" for "cento" ever safe?
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: "cantão" vs "cento" - which ranks higher?
"cento" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,620 in our Portuguese list, against #29,259 for "cantão". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "cantão" vs "cento" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cantão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cento" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #36,077 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cantão" and "cento" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cânhamo vs cantão". 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 #36,077 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