íonvsironConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#44,174
“íon” frequency rank
#13,963
“iron” frequency rank
58137
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature íon iron
Definition espécie química eletricamente carregada, geralmente um átomo ou molécula que perdeu ou ganhou elétrons ferro, elemento químico de número atômico 26 e símbolo Fe

Letter map: íon vs iron

Shared letters muted; letters that set íon and iron apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. íon runs 3 letters (VVC) against iron's 4 (VCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
íon
4 ch
iron

Spelling & dictionary notes on íon vs iron

íon and iron 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 58137, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

íon is recorded at frequency rank #44,174, classified as anoun. iron is at rank #13,963, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈaɪərn/, ouvir^(fonte ?).

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 58137, this pair ranks #8,925 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of íon vs iron

Shared letters: no. Private to "íon": í. Private to "iron": ir.

"íon" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "iron" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • iron ← iorn · irno · ironn · irron · rion

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "íon" and "iron" be used interchangeably?
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.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "íon" or "iron" show up more?
"iron" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,963 in our Portuguese list, against #44,174 for "íon". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "íon" and "iron". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "íon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "iron" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #8,925 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "íon" and "iron" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ino vs íon". 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 #8,925 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