delavsdoloWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#295
“dela” frequency rank
#43,862
“dolo” frequency rank
44157
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dela dolo
Definition contração da preposição de e do pronome ela vontade livre e consciente de realizar uma conduta tipificada na legislação penal

Letter map: dela vs dolo

Shared letters muted; letters that set dela and dolo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. dela and dolo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
dela
4 ch
dolo

Part-of-speech tell for dela / dolo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dela is acontraction and doloanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44157, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dela is recorded at frequency rank #295, classified as acontraction, pronounced /ˈde.lɐ/. dolo is at rank #43,862, tagged as anoun.

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 44157, this pair ranks #21,384 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dela vs dolo

Shared letters: dl. Private to "dela": ae. Private to "dolo": o.

"dela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "dolo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dela ← ddela · deal · della · dlea · edla
  • dolo ← ddolo · dloo · dollo · dool · odlo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dela" and "dolo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dela" is a contraction and "dolo" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "dela" or "dolo"?
"dela" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #295 in our Portuguese list, against #43,862 for "dolo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "dela" and "dolo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "dela" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dolo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,384 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dela" and "dolo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dolo vs drogo". 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 #21,384 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