delineadovsdelinearTell them apart

Quick tell: delineado is a adjective, delinear is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“delineado” is an adjective and “delinear” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,355
“delineado” frequency rank
#32,928
“delinear” frequency rank
66283
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature delineado delinear
Definition traçado; desenhado ou composto de modo preciso e esquemático esboçar

Letter map: delineado vs delinear

Shared letters muted; letters that set delineado and delinear apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. delineado runs 9 letters (CVCVCVVCV) against delinear's 8 (CVCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
delineado
8 ch
delinear

Grammar separator: delineado vs delinear

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: delineado is anadjective and delinearaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66283, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

delineado is recorded at frequency rank #33,355, classified as anadj. delinear is at rank #32,928, tagged as averb, pronounced /dɨ.li.ˈnjaɾ/.

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 66283, this pair ranks #5,050 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of delineado vs delinear

Shared letters: adeiln. Private to "delineado": o. Private to "delinear": r.

"delineado" · 9 letters · shape CVCVCVVCV  ·  "delinear" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • delineado ← ddelineado · deilneado · delienado · delinaedo · delineaddo · delineaod · delinedao · delinneado
  • delinear ← ddelinear · deilnear · delienar · delinaer · delinearr · delinera · delinnear · dellinear

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "delineado" for "delinear" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "delineado" is an adjective and "delinear" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "delineado" or "delinear" show up more?
"delinear" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,928 in our Portuguese list, against #33,355 for "delineado". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "delineado" vs "delinear" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "delineado" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "delinear" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,050 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "delineado" and "delinear" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "declinar vs delinear". 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 #5,050 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