dalvsdaliWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: dal is a noun, dali is a contraction, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“dal” is a noun and “dali” is a contraction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,029
“dal” frequency rank
#6,049
“dali” frequency rank
33078
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dal dali
Definition olho contração da preposição de com o advérbio de lugar ali:

Letter map: dal vs dali

Shared letters muted; letters that set dal and dali apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
dal
4 ch
dali

Part-of-speech tell for dal / dali

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dal is anoun and daliacontraction. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “dal” sits inside “dali”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33078, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dal is recorded at frequency rank #27,029, classified as anoun, pronounced /ta˨˦/. dali is at rank #6,049, tagged as acontraction.

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 33078, this pair ranks #34,548 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dal vs dali

Shared letters: adl. Private to "dal": -. Private to "dali": i.

"dal" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "dali" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • daliadli · dail · dalli · ddali · dlai

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dal" for "dali" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dal" is a noun and "dali" a contraction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "dal" or "dali"?
"dali" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,049 in our Portuguese list, against #27,029 for "dal". 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 "dal" and "dali". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dali" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #34,548 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dal" and "dali" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dal vs dat". 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 #34,548 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