galãovsgeloTell them apart

Which to use

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

#27,496
“galão” frequency rank
#2,325
“gelo” frequency rank
29821
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature galão gelo
Definition tira de tecido bordada com fios e usada como ornamentação de roupas, estofamentos, etc água em estado sólido, cristalizada, por estar em temperatura muito baixa

Letter map: galão vs gelo

Shared letters muted; letters that set galão and gelo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. galão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against gelo's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
galão
4 ch
gelo

Pair insight - galão / gelo

galão and gelo 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 29821, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

galão is recorded at frequency rank #27,496, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡɐ.ˈlɐ̃w̃/. gelo is at rank #2,325, 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 29821, this pair ranks #38,742 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of galão vs gelo

Shared letters: glo. Private to "galão": aã. Private to "gelo": e.

"galão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "gelo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gelo ← eglo · gello · geol · ggelo · gleo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "galão" and "gelo" be used interchangeably?
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.
Frequency check: "galão" vs "gelo" - which ranks higher?
"gelo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,325 in our Portuguese list, against #27,496 for "galão". 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 "galão" and "gelo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "galão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gelo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,742 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "galão" and "gelo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "galão vs gelar". 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 #38,742 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