lavslipaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: la is a pronoun, lipa is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“la” is a pronoun and “lipa” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#163
“la” frequency rank
#34,787
“lipa” frequency rank
34950
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature la lipa
Definition mesmo que a, utilizado em ênclise com verbos que terminam em -z, -r ou -s tília, árvore do gênero Tilia:

Letter map: la vs lipa

Shared letters muted; letters that set la and lipa apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
la
4 ch
lipa

Part-of-speech tell for la / lipa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: la is apronoun and lipaanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34950, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

la is recorded at frequency rank #163, classified as apron. lipa is at rank #34,787, 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 34950, this pair ranks #32,197 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of la vs lipa

Shared letters: al. Private to "la": -. Private to "lipa": ip.

"la" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "lipa" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lipailpa · liap · lippa · llipa · lpia

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "la" and "lipa" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "la" is a pronoun and "lipa" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "la" or "lipa" show up more?
"la" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #163 in our Portuguese list, against #34,787 for "lipa". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "la" vs "lipa" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "la" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lipa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #32,197 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "la" and "lipa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "liana vs lipa". 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 #32,197 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