levsloseConfusable pair

Quick tell: le is a article, lose is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#2,016
“le” frequency rank
#27,921
“lose” frequency rank
29937
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Letter map: le vs lose

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

2 ch
le
4 ch
lose

Part-of-speech tell for le / lose

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: le is anarticle and loseanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29937, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

le is recorded at frequency rank #2,016, classified as anarticle. lose is at rank #27,921, tagged as anadj.

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 29937, this pair ranks #38,566 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of le vs lose

Shared letters: el. Private to "le": -. Private to "lose": os.

"le" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "lose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • losellose · loes · losse · lsoe · olse

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "le" and "lose" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "le" is an article and "lose" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "le" or "lose" show up more?
"le" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,016 in our Portuguese list, against #27,921 for "lose". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "le" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lose" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,566 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "le" and "lose" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "loch vs lose". 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 #38,566 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