cantovschatoWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#2,082
“canto” frequency rank
#4,619
“chato” frequency rank
6701
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature canto chato
Definition o ato de cantar achatado

Letter map: canto vs chato

Shared letters muted; letters that set canto and chato apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
canto
5 ch
chato

Part-of-speech tell for canto / chato

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: canto is anoun and chatoanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6701, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

canto is recorded at frequency rank #2,082, classified as anoun. chato is at rank #4,619, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈʃa.tu/.

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 6701, this pair ranks #67,667 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of canto vs chato

Shared letters: acot. Private to "canto": n. Private to "chato": h.

"canto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "chato" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cantoacnto · cannto · canot · cantto · catno · ccanto · cnato
  • chatocahto · cchato · chaot · chatto · chhato · chtao · hcato

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "canto" and "chato" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "canto" is a noun and "chato" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "canto" or "chato" show up more?
"canto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,082 in our Portuguese list, against #4,619 for "chato". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "canto" and "chato".

  • Full dictionary entry for "canto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chato" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #67,667 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "canto" and "chato" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chato vs chau". 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 #67,667 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