civilizaçãovscivilizadoTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#4,982
“civilização” frequency rank
#22,567
“civilizado” frequency rank
27549
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature civilização civilizado
Definition ato ou efeito de civilizar que tem civilização

Letter map: civilização vs civilizado

Shared letters muted; letters that set civilização and civilizado apart highlighted. Shared run: 9. civilização runs 11 letters (CVCVCVCVCVV) against civilizado's 10 (CVCVCVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

11 ch
civilização
10 ch
civilizado

Part-of-speech tell for civilização / civilizado

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: civilização is anoun and civilizadoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27549, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

civilização is recorded at frequency rank #4,982, classified as anoun, pronounced /sɨ.vɨ.li.zɐ.ˈsɐ̃w̃/. civilizado is at rank #22,567, 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 27549, this pair ranks #41,401 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of civilização vs civilizado

Shared letters: acilovz. Private to "civilização": ãç. Private to "civilizado": d.

"civilização" · 11 letters · shape CVCVCVCVCVV  ·  "civilizado" · 10 letters · shape CVCVCVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • civilizado ← ccivilizado · ciivlizado · civiilzado · civiliazdo · civilizaddo · civilizaod · civilizdao · civilizzado

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "civilização" for "civilizado" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "civilização" is a noun and "civilizado" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "civilização" or "civilizado"?
"civilização" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,982 in our Portuguese list, against #22,567 for "civilizado". 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 "civilização" and "civilizado". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "civilização" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "civilizado" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #41,401 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "civilização" and "civilizado" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "civilidade vs civilizado". 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 #41,401 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