condevscordelWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#6,156
“conde” frequency rank
#19,668
“cordel” frequency rank
25824
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature conde cordel
Definition dignitário e comandante militar no império romano do oriente corda bastante fina e flexível; barbante, cordão, guita

Where the eye mixes conde and cordel

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. conde runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against cordel's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
conde
6 ch
cordel

Look-alike desk: conde vs cordel

A purely visual mix-up. conde (/ˈkõ.dɨ/) and cordel (/kuɾ.ˈdɛɫ/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25824, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

conde is recorded at frequency rank #6,156, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈkõ.dɨ/. cordel is at rank #19,668, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kuɾ.ˈdɛɫ/.

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 25824, this pair ranks #43,420 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of conde vs cordel

Shared letters: cdeo. Private to "conde": n. Private to "cordel": lr.

"conde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "cordel" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • conde ← cconde · cnode · codne · condde · coned · connde · ocnde
  • cordel ← ccordel · codrel · corddel · cordell · cordle · coredl · corrdel · crodel

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "conde" for "cordel" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈkõ.dɨ/ versus /kuɾ.ˈdɛɫ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "conde" or "cordel" show up more?
"conde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,156 in our Portuguese list, against #19,668 for "cordel". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "conde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cordel" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,420 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "conde" and "cordel" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "codex vs cordel". 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 #43,420 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