latevslheConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#12,276
“late” frequency rank
#322
“lhe” frequency rank
12598
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature late lhe
Definition terceira pessoa do presente do indicativo do verbo latir pronome pessoal dativo, de dois gêneros, da terceira pessoa do singular (ele, ela, você)

Letter map: late vs lhe

Shared letters muted; letters that set late and lhe apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
late
3 ch
lhe

Role in the sentence - late and lhe

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: late is averb and lheapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12598, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

late is recorded at frequency rank #12,276, classified as averb. lhe is at rank #322, tagged as apron, pronounced /ʎɨ/.

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 12598, this pair ranks #59,933 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of late vs lhe

Shared letters: el. Private to "late": at. Private to "lhe": h.

"late" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "lhe" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • latealte · laet · latte · llate · ltae

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "late" and "lhe" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "late" is a verb and "lhe" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "late" vs "lhe" - which ranks higher?
"lhe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #322 in our Portuguese list, against #12,276 for "late". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "late" vs "lhe" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "late" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lhe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,933 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "late" and "lhe" 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 #59,933 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