íonvsitsWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: íon is a noun, its is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#44,174
“íon” frequency rank
#11,659
“its” frequency rank
55833
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature íon its
Definition espécie química eletricamente carregada, geralmente um átomo ou molécula que perdeu ou ganhou elétrons adjetivo possessivo da terceira pessoa neutra do singular, dele ou dela.

Letter map: íon vs its

Shared letters muted; letters that set íon and its apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

3 ch
íon
3 ch
its

Role in the sentence - íon and its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: íon is anoun and itsanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55833, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

íon is recorded at frequency rank #44,174, classified as anoun. its is at rank #11,659, tagged as anadj.

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 55833, this pair ranks #10,349 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of íon vs its

Shared letters: none. Private to "íon": noí. Private to "its": ist.

"íon" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "íon" for "its" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "íon" is a noun and "its" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "íon" or "its" show up more?
"its" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,659 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "íon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "its" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #10,349 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "íon" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ino vs íon". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #10,349 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