duro vs duto, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“duro” is an adjective and “duto” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,070
“duro” frequency rank: #35,558
“duto” frequency rank: 38628
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	duro	duto
Definition	difícil de quebrar ou de desfazer	cano (peça cilíndrica oca)

Letter map: duro vs duto

Shared letters muted; letters that set duro and duto apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

duro

4 ch

duto

Role in the sentence - duro and duto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: duro is anadjective and dutoanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - r in “duro” becomes t in “duto”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38628, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

duro is recorded at frequency rank #3,070, classified as anadj. duto is at rank #35,558, tagged as anoun, pronounced /'du.tʊ/..

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 38628, this pair ranks #27,774 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of duro vs duto

Shared letters: dou. Private to "duro": r. Private to "duto": t.

"duro" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "duto" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

duro ← dduro · druo · duor · durro · udro
duto ← dduto · dtuo · duot · dutto · udto

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "duro" and "duto" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "duro" is an adjective and "duto" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "duro" or "duto" show up more?

"duro" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,070 in our Portuguese list, against #35,558 for "duto". 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 "duro" and "duto".

Full dictionary entry for "duro" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "duto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #27,774 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"duro" and "duto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dat vs duto". 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 #27,774 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.