filãovsfulanoTell them apart

Which to use

“filão” and “fulano” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#49,976
“filão” frequency rank
#16,777
“fulano” frequency rank
66753
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature filão fulano
Definition intrusão de rochas eruptivas em fendas pessoa qualquer não especificada; usado para completar o espaço que deveria ser preenchido pelo nome de uma pessoa qualquer em uma frase:

Letter map: filão vs fulano

Shared letters muted; letters that set filão and fulano apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. filão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against fulano's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
filão
6 ch
fulano

Pair insight - filão / fulano

filão and fulano are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66753, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

filão is recorded at frequency rank #49,976, classified as anoun. fulano is at rank #16,777, 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 66753, this pair ranks #4,873 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of filão vs fulano

Shared letters: flo. Private to "filão": iã. Private to "fulano": anu.

"filão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "fulano" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fulano ← ffulano · fluano · fualno · fulanno · fulaon · fullano · fulnao · uflano

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "filão" and "fulano" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "filão" or "fulano" show up more?
"fulano" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,777 in our Portuguese list, against #49,976 for "filão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "filão" and "fulano".

  • Full dictionary entry for "filão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fulano" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,873 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "filão" and "fulano" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "filão vs finado". 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 #4,873 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