cistovscultoWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#39,054
“cisto” frequency rank
#4,717
“culto” frequency rank
43771
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cisto culto
Definition saco fechado que tem uma membrana e divisão distintas do tecido circundante que se cultivou

Letter map: cisto vs culto

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

5 ch
cisto
5 ch
culto

Part-of-speech tell for cisto / culto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cisto is anoun and cultoanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43771, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cisto is recorded at frequency rank #39,054, classified as anoun. culto is at rank #4,717, 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 43771, this pair ranks #21,830 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cisto vs culto

Shared letters: cot. Private to "cisto": is. Private to "culto": lu.

"cisto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "culto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cisto ← ccisto · cisot · cissto · cistto · citso · csito · icsto
  • culto ← cculto · cluto · cullto · culot · cultto · cutlo · uclto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cisto" for "culto" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cisto" is a noun and "culto" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cisto" or "culto" show up more?
"culto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,717 in our Portuguese list, against #39,054 for "cisto". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "cisto" and "culto". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cisto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "culto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,830 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cisto" and "culto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ciao vs cisto". 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 #21,830 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