chãovscherWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#1,140
“chão” frequency rank
#22,560
“cher” frequency rank
23700
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature chão cher
Definition corda querido, adorado:

Letter map: chão vs cher

Shared letters muted; letters that set chão and cher apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
chão
4 ch
cher

Part-of-speech tell for chão / cher

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: chão is anoun and cheranadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23700, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

chão is recorded at frequency rank #1,140, classified as anoun. cher is at rank #22,560, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ʃɛʁ/.

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 23700, this pair ranks #46,084 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of chão vs cher

Shared letters: ch. Private to "chão": . Private to "cher": er.

"chão" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "cher" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cherccher · cehr · cherr · chher · chre · hcer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "chão" and "cher" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "chão" is a noun and "cher" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "chão" or "cher"?
"chão" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,140 in our Portuguese list, against #22,560 for "cher". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "chão" and "cher".

  • Full dictionary entry for "chão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cher" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #46,084 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "chão" and "cher" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cher vs chess". 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 #46,084 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