hovsholdWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ho is a pronoun, hold is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ho” is a pronoun and “hold” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,490
“ho” frequency rank
#13,098
“hold” frequency rank
21588
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ho hold
Definition o lua, satélite natural da Terra

Letter map: ho vs hold

Shared letters muted; letters that set ho and hold apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
ho
4 ch
hold

Part-of-speech tell for ho / hold

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ho is apronoun and holdanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ho” sits inside “hold”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21588, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ho is recorded at frequency rank #8,490, classified as apron. hold is at rank #13,098, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈhold/.

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 21588, this pair ranks #48,623 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ho vs hold

Shared letters: ho. Private to "ho": -. Private to "hold": dl.

"ho" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "hold" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • holdhhold · hlod · hodl · holdd · holld · ohld

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ho" and "hold" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ho" is a pronoun and "hold" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ho" vs "hold" - which ranks higher?
"ho" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,490 in our Portuguese list, against #13,098 for "hold". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "ho" and "hold". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ho" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hold" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,623 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ho" and "hold" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ho vs hui". 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 #48,623 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