gelovsgulaWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#2,325
“gelo” frequency rank
#35,619
“gula” frequency rank
37944
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gelo gula
Definition água em estado sólido, cristalizada, por estar em temperatura muito baixa desejo excessivo de comer

Letter map: gelo vs gula

Shared letters muted; letters that set gelo and gula apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. gelo and gula follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
gelo
4 ch
gula

Spelling & dictionary notes on gelo vs gula

gelo and gula 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37944, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gelo is recorded at frequency rank #2,325, classified as anoun. gula is at rank #35,619, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɡu.lɐ/.

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 37944, this pair ranks #28,595 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of gelo vs gula

Shared letters: gl. Private to "gelo": eo. Private to "gula": au.

"gelo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "gula" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gelo ← eglo · gello · geol · ggelo · gleo
  • gula ← ggula · glua · gual · gulla · ugla

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "gelo" and "gula" be used interchangeably?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, 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 "gelo" or "gula" show up more?
"gelo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,325 in our Portuguese list, against #35,619 for "gula". 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 "gelo" and "gula".

  • Full dictionary entry for "gelo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gula" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #28,595 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gelo" and "gula" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "grua vs gula". 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 #28,595 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