joinvsJoséWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: join is a verb, José is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“join” is a verb and “José” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,778
“join” frequency rank
#567
“José” frequency rank
35345
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature join José
Definition juntar, unir José

Where the eye mixes join and José

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
join
4 ch
José

Why the eye confuses join with José

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: join is /ˈdʒɔɪn/ while José is /xo.sé/.. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35345, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

join is recorded at frequency rank #34,778, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈdʒɔɪn/. José is at rank #567, tagged as anoun, pronounced /xo.sé/..

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 35345, this pair ranks #31,711 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of join vs José

Shared letters: jo. Private to "join": in. Private to "José": .

"join" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "José" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • joinjion · jjoin · joinn · joni · ojin

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "join" and "José" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "join" is a verb and "José" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "join" or "José" show up more?
"José" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #567 in our Portuguese list, against #34,778 for "join". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "join" and "José" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "join" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "José" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #31,711 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "join" and "José" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "joca vs join". 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 #31,711 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