lancevslateWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#3,335
“lance” frequency rank
#12,276
“late” frequency rank
15611
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lance late
Definition jogada (em evento esportivo, por exemplo) terceira pessoa do presente do indicativo do verbo latir

Letter map: lance vs late

Shared letters muted; letters that set lance and late apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
lance
4 ch
late

Part-of-speech tell for lance / late

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lance is anoun and lateaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15611, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lance is recorded at frequency rank #3,335, classified as anoun. late is at rank #12,276, tagged as averb.

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 15611, this pair ranks #56,165 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lance vs late

Shared letters: ael. Private to "lance": cn. Private to "late": t.

"lance" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "late" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lancealnce · lacne · lancce · lanec · lannce · llance · lnace
  • latealte · laet · latte · llate · ltae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "lance" and "late" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lance" is a noun and "late" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "lance" or "late" show up more?
"lance" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,335 in our Portuguese list, against #12,276 for "late". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "lance" and "late".

  • Full dictionary entry for "lance" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "late" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #56,165 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lance" and "late" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "laca vs late". 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 #56,165 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