cistovscustaTell them apart

Which to use

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

#39,054
“cisto” frequency rank
#2,470
“custa” frequency rank
41524
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cisto custa
Definition saco fechado que tem uma membrana e divisão distintas do tecido circundante despesa feita com alguma coisa

Letter map: cisto vs custa

Shared letters muted; letters that set cisto and custa apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. cisto and custa 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
custa

Spelling & dictionary notes on cisto vs custa

cisto and custa 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41524, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cisto is recorded at frequency rank #39,054, classified as anoun. custa is at rank #2,470, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkuʃ.tɐ/.

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 41524, this pair ranks #24,388 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cisto vs custa

Shared letters: cst. Private to "cisto": io. Private to "custa": au.

"cisto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "custa" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cisto ← ccisto · cisot · cissto · cistto · citso · csito · icsto
  • custa ← ccusta · csuta · cusat · cussta · custta · cutsa · ucsta

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cisto" for "custa" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cisto" or "custa" show up more?
"custa" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,470 in our Portuguese list, against #39,054 for "cisto". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "cisto" vs "custa" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cisto" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "custa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #24,388 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cisto" and "custa" 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 #24,388 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