le vs lew, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“le” is an article and “lew” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,016
“le” frequency rank: #37,890
“lew” frequency rank: 39906
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	le	lew
Definition	partícula gramatical usada antes de substantivos ou palavras substantivadas; por geral indica uma coisa em particular	leão

Letter map: le vs lew

Shared letters muted; letters that set le and lew apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch

3 ch

lew

Part-of-speech tell for le / lew

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: le is anarticle and lewanoun. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “le” sits inside “lew”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39906, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

le is recorded at frequency rank #2,016, classified as anarticle. lew is at rank #37,890, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lɛf/.

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 39906, this pair ranks #26,268 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of le vs lew

Shared letters: el. Private to "le": -. Private to "lew": w.

"le" · 2 letters · shape CV · "lew" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "le" and "lew" be used interchangeably?

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

Which is more common, "le" or "lew"?

"le" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,016 in our Portuguese list, against #37,890 for "lew". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "le" and "lew". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "le" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lew" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #26,268 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"le" and "lew" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lew vs Lied". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #26,268 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.