del vs dell, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#1,706
“del” frequency rank: #19,394
“dell” frequency rank: 21100
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	del	dell
Definition	do, da, contração da preposição de com o artigo definido singular el:	vale

Letter map: del vs dell

Shared letters muted; letters that set del and dell apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch

del

4 ch

dell

Role in the sentence - del and dell

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: del is acontraction and dellanoun. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “del” sits inside “dell”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21100, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

del is recorded at frequency rank #1,706, classified as acontraction. dell is at rank #19,394, tagged as anoun, pronounced /dɛl/.

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 21100, this pair ranks #49,249 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of del vs dell

Shared letters: del. Private to "del": -. Private to "dell": -.

"del" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "dell" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

dell ← ddell · dlel · edll

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "del" for "dell" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "del" is a contraction and "dell" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "del" or "dell" show up more?

"del" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,706 in our Portuguese list, against #19,394 for "dell". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "del" and "dell". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "del" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "dell" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #49,249 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"del" and "dell" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dell vs devi". 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 #49,249 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.