indício vs início, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#19,758
“indício” frequency rank: #377
“início” frequency rank: 20135
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	indício	início
Definition	vestígio, laivo	começo

Letter map: indício vs início

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

7 ch

indício

6 ch

início

Pair insight - indício / início

indício and início 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 20135, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

indício is recorded at frequency rank #19,758, classified as anoun, pronounced /ĩ.ˈdi.sju/. 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 20135, this pair ranks #50,461 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of indício vs início

Shared letters: cinoí. Private to "indício": d. Private to "início": -.

"indício" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVV · "início" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "indício" and "início" 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.

Frequency check: "indício" vs "início" - which ranks higher?

"início" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #377 in our Portuguese list, against #19,758 for "indício". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "indício" and "início". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "indício" 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 #50,461 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"indício" and "início" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "indeciso vs indício". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #50,461 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.