livrevslivretoWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: livre is a adjective, livreto is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#535
“livre” frequency rank
#37,400
“livreto” frequency rank
37935
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature livre livreto
Definition o que tem a faculdade de agir ou não agir livro; folheto; panfleto

Letter map: livre vs livreto

Shared letters muted; letters that set livre and livreto apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. livre runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against livreto's 7 (CVCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
livre
7 ch
livreto

Part-of-speech tell for livre / livreto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: livre is anadjective and livretoanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “livre” sits inside “livreto”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37935, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

livre is recorded at frequency rank #535, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈli.vɾɨ/. livreto is at rank #37,400, tagged as anoun.

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 37935, this pair ranks #28,607 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of livre vs livreto

Shared letters: eilrv. Private to "livre": -. Private to "livreto": ot.

"livre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "livreto" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • livre ← ilvre · lirve · liver · livrre · livvre · llivre · lvire
  • livreto ← ilvreto · lirveto · liverto · livreot · livretto · livrreto · livrteo · livvreto

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "livre" and "livreto" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "livre" is an adjective and "livreto" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "livre" or "livreto" show up more?
"livre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #535 in our Portuguese list, against #37,400 for "livreto". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "livre" vs "livreto" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "livre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "livreto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #28,607 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "livre" and "livreto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lince vs livre". 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 #28,607 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