circovscurdoWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#5,717
“circo” frequency rank
#33,772
“curdo” frequency rank
39489
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature circo curdo
Definition em Roma, recinto onde se realizavam jogos para entretenimento público; o conjunto dos jogos relativo ao grupo étnico de origem ariana-iraniana que habita o Oriente Médio e reivindica o Curdistão como nação

Letter map: circo vs curdo

Shared letters muted; letters that set circo and curdo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. circo and curdo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
circo
5 ch
curdo

Part-of-speech tell for circo / curdo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: circo is anoun and curdoanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39489, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

circo is recorded at frequency rank #5,717, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈsirku/. curdo is at rank #33,772, 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 39489, this pair ranks #26,748 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of circo vs curdo

Shared letters: cor. Private to "circo": i. Private to "curdo": du.

"circo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "curdo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • circo ← ccirco · cicro · circco · ciroc · cirrco · crico · icrco
  • curdo ← ccurdo · crudo · cudro · curddo · curod · currdo · ucrdo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "circo" for "curdo" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "circo" is a noun and "curdo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "circo" or "curdo" show up more?
"circo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,717 in our Portuguese list, against #33,772 for "curdo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "circo" and "curdo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "circo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "curdo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #26,748 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "circo" and "curdo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cerda vs curdo". 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 #26,748 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