issovsitsWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#40
“isso” frequency rank
#11,659
“its” frequency rank
11699
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature isso its
Definition essa coisa ou esse assunto; essas coisas; esses assuntos adjetivo possessivo da terceira pessoa neutra do singular, dele ou dela.

Letter map: isso vs its

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

4 ch
isso
3 ch
its

Role in the sentence - isso and its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: isso is apronoun and itsanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11699, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

isso is recorded at frequency rank #40, classified as apron. 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 11699, this pair ranks #61,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of isso vs its

Shared letters: is. Private to "isso": o. Private to "its": t.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • issoiso · isos · siso

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "isso" for "its" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "isso" is a pronoun and "its" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "isso" or "its"?
"isso" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40 in our Portuguese list, against #11,659 for "its". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "isso" 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 #61,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "isso" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ino vs its". 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 #61,103 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