le vs ls, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“le” and “ls” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,016
“le” frequency rank: #27,923
“ls” frequency rank: 29939
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	le	ls
Definition	partícula gramatical usada antes de substantivos ou palavras substantivadas; por geral indica uma coisa em particular	os, artigo definido masculino plural:

Letter map: le vs ls

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

2 ch

Pair insight - le / ls

le and ls are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - e in “le” becomes s in “ls”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29939, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

le is recorded at frequency rank #2,016, classified as anarticle. ls is at rank #27,923, tagged as anarticle.

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 29939, this pair ranks #38,564 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of le vs ls

Shared letters: l. Private to "le": e. Private to "ls": s.

"le" · 2 letters · shape CV · "ls" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

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

No. They differ by a single letter - e in “le” becomes s in “ls”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "le" or "ls" show up more?

"le" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,016 in our Portuguese list, against #27,923 for "ls". 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 "ls". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "le" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ls" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #38,564 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"le" and "ls" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lise vs ls". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #38,564 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.