ilsvsissoTell them apart

Which to use

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

#44,900
“ils” frequency rank
#40
“isso” frequency rank
44940
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ils isso
Definition eles essa coisa ou esse assunto; essas coisas; esses assuntos

Letter map: ils vs isso

Shared letters muted; letters that set ils and isso apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ils
4 ch
isso

Corpus notes: ils and isso

ils and isso 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 44940, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ils is recorded at frequency rank #44,900, classified as apron, pronounced \il\. isso is at rank #40, tagged as apron.

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 44940, this pair ranks #20,488 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ils vs isso

Shared letters: is. Private to "ils": l. Private to "isso": o.

"ils" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "isso" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • issoiso · isos · siso

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ils" and "isso" 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.
Which is more common, "ils" or "isso"?
"isso" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40 in our Portuguese list, against #44,900 for "ils". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "ils" vs "isso" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ils" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "isso" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #20,488 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ils" and "isso" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ils vs ino". 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 #20,488 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