le vs lit, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#2,016
“le” frequency rank: #31,433
“lit” frequency rank: 33449
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	le	lit
Definition	partícula gramatical usada antes de substantivos ou palavras substantivadas; por geral indica uma coisa em particular	cama, leito

Letter map: le vs lit

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

2 ch

3 ch

lit

Role in the sentence - le and lit

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: le is anarticle and litanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33449, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

le is recorded at frequency rank #2,016, classified as anarticle. lit is at rank #31,433, tagged as anoun, pronounced /li/.

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 33449, this pair ranks #34,078 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of le vs lit

Shared letters: l. Private to "le": e. Private to "lit": it.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

"le" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,016 in our Portuguese list, against #31,433 for "lit". 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 "lit". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "le" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #34,078 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"le" and "lit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Lied vs lit". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #34,078 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.