ilícito vs início, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#20,028
“ilícito” frequency rank: #377
“início” frequency rank: 20405
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ilícito	início
Definition	ilegal, proibido pela lei	começo

Letter map: ilícito vs início

Shared letters muted; letters that set ilícito and início apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. ilícito runs 7 letters (VCVCVCV) against início's 6 (VCVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch

ilícito

6 ch

início

Grammar separator: ilícito vs início

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ilícito is anadjective and inícioanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20405, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ilícito is recorded at frequency rank #20,028, classified as anadj, pronounced /i.ˈli.si.tu/. início is at rank #377, 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 20405, this pair ranks #50,131 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ilícito vs início

Shared letters: cioí. Private to "ilícito": lt. Private to "início": n.

"ilícito" · 7 letters · shape VCVCVCV · "início" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ilícito" for "início" ever safe?

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

Which is more common, "ilícito" or "início"?

"início" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #377 in our Portuguese list, against #20,028 for "ilícito". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "ilícito" vs "início" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ilícito" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "início" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #50,131 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ilícito" and "início" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ilícito vs implícito". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #50,131 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.