citovscontoConfusable pair

Quick tell: cito is a verb, conto is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cito” is a verb and “conto” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,237
“cito” frequency rank
#2,366
“conto” frequency rank
27603
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cito conto
Definition fazer mover-se, excitar. narração fictícia breve, menor que uma novela, falada ou escrita

Where the eye mixes cito and conto

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
cito
5 ch
conto

Why the eye confuses cito with conto

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cito is /ˈki.toː/ while conto is /ˈkõ.tu/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27603, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cito is recorded at frequency rank #25,237, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈki.toː/. conto is at rank #2,366, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkõ.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 27603, this pair ranks #41,344 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cito vs conto

Shared letters: cot. Private to "cito": i. Private to "conto": n.

"cito" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "conto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • citoccito · ciot · citto · ctio · icto
  • contocconto · cnoto · connto · conot · contto · cotno · ocnto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cito" for "conto" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cito" is a verb and "conto" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cito" or "conto" show up more?
"conto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,366 in our Portuguese list, against #25,237 for "cito". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cito" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "conto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #41,344 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cito" and "conto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ciao vs cito". 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 #41,344 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