lincevslindoTell them apart

Quick tell: lince is a noun, lindo is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“lince” is a noun and “lindo” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,653
“lince” frequency rank
#1,216
“lindo” frequency rank
41869
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lince lindo
Definition designação comum a três espécies de mamíferos do gênero Felis, da família dos felídeos, com cauda curta ou muito curta e tufos de pelos nas orelhas bonito; belo; que tem beleza

Where the eye mixes lince and lindo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. lince and lindo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
lince
5 ch
lindo

Visual trap between lince and lindo

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: lince is /ˈlĩ.sɨ/ while lindo is /ˈlĩ.du/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41869, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lince is recorded at frequency rank #40,653, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈlĩ.sɨ/. lindo is at rank #1,216, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈlĩ.du/.

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 41869, this pair ranks #23,999 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lince vs lindo

Shared letters: iln. Private to "lince": ce. Private to "lindo": do.

"lince" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "lindo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lince ← ilnce · licne · lincce · linec · linnce · llince · lnice
  • lindo ← ilndo · lidno · linddo · linndo · linod · llindo · lnido

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lince" for "lindo" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lince" is a noun and "lindo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "lince" or "lindo"?
"lindo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,216 in our Portuguese list, against #40,653 for "lince". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "lince" and "lindo" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lince" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lindo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #23,999 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lince" and "lindo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lime vs lince". 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 #23,999 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