las vs ls, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“las” is a pronoun and “ls” is an article - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#852
“las” frequency rank: #27,923
“ls” frequency rank: 28775
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	las	ls
Definition	as, pronome demonstrativo	os, artigo definido masculino plural:

Letter map: las vs ls

Shared letters muted; letters that set las and ls apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

las

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for las / ls

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: las is apronoun and lsanarticle. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28775, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

las is recorded at frequency rank #852, classified as apron. ls is at rank #27,923, tagged as anarticle.

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 28775, this pair ranks #40,013 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of las vs ls

Shared letters: ls. Private to "las": a. Private to "ls": -.

"las" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "ls" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "las" for "ls" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "las" is a pronoun and "ls" an article, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "las" or "ls"?

"las" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #852 in our Portuguese list, against #27,923 for "ls". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "las" and "ls".

Full dictionary entry for "las" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ls" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #40,013 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"las" and "ls" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lise vs ls". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #40,013 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.