coinvscosWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: coin is a noun, cos is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“coin” is a noun and “cos” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#41,891
“coin” frequency rank
#27,810
“cos” frequency rank
69701
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coin cos
Definition plural de cù qualquer coisa

Letter map: coin vs cos

Shared letters muted; letters that set coin and cos apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. coin runs 4 letters (CVVC) against cos's 3 (CVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
coin
3 ch
cos

Role in the sentence - coin and cos

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: coin is anoun and cosapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69701, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coin is recorded at frequency rank #41,891, classified as anoun, pronounced /konʲ/. cos is at rank #27,810, tagged as apron.

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 69701, this pair ranks #3,871 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coin vs cos

Shared letters: co. Private to "coin": in. Private to "cos": s.

"coin" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "cos" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coin ← ccoin · cion · coinn · coni · ocin

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "coin" for "cos" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coin" is a noun and "cos" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "coin" or "cos" show up more?
"cos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,810 in our Portuguese list, against #41,891 for "coin". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "coin" and "cos". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "coin" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #3,871 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coin" and "cos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coice vs coin". 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 #3,871 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