dele vs delta, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#261
“dele” frequency rank: #7,134
“delta” frequency rank: 7395
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	dele	delta
Definition	contração da preposição de com o pronome pessoal ele	quarta letra do alfabeto grego e tem um valor numérico de 4

Letter map: dele vs delta

Shared letters muted; letters that set dele and delta apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

dele

5 ch

delta

Part-of-speech tell for dele / delta

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dele is acontraction and deltaanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7395, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dele is recorded at frequency rank #261, classified as acontraction, pronounced /ˈde.lɨ/. delta is at rank #7,134, 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 7395, this pair ranks #66,746 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of dele vs delta

Shared letters: del. Private to "dele": -. Private to "delta": at.

"dele" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "delta" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

dele ← ddele · deel · delle · dlee · edle
delta ← ddelta · delat · dellta · deltta · detla · dleta · edlta

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dele" and "delta" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

Frequency check: "dele" vs "delta" - which ranks higher?

"dele" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #261 in our Portuguese list, against #7,134 for "delta". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "dele" and "delta". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "dele" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "delta" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #66,746 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"dele" and "delta" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dele 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 #66,746 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.