le vs lim, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#2,016
“le” frequency rank: #27,164
“lim” frequency rank: 29180
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Letter map: le vs lim

Shared letters muted; letters that set le and lim apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

3 ch

lim

Part-of-speech tell for le / lim

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: le is anarticle and limanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29180, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

le is recorded at frequency rank #2,016, classified as anarticle. lim is at rank #27,164, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lim/.

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 29180, this pair ranks #39,529 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of le vs lim

Shared letters: l. Private to "le": e. Private to "lim": im.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "le" for "lim" ever safe?

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

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

"le" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,016 in our Portuguese list, against #27,164 for "lim". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "le" vs "lim" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "le" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lim" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #39,529 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"le" and "lim" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Lied vs lim". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #39,529 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.