ló vs ls, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#37,407
“ló” frequency rank: #27,923
“ls” frequency rank: 65330
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ló	ls
Definition	lado de uma embarcação que fica exposto ao vento	os, artigo definido masculino plural:

Letter map: ló vs ls

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

2 ch

ló

2 ch

Role in the sentence - ló and ls

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ló is anoun and lsanarticle. On the page they differ by a single letter - ó in “ló” becomes s in “ls”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65330, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ló is recorded at frequency rank #37,407, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈlɔ/. 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 65330, this pair ranks #5,433 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ló vs ls

Shared letters: l. Private to "ló": ó. Private to "ls": s.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ló" and "ls" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

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

"ls" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,923 in our Portuguese list, against #37,407 for "ló". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "ló" and "ls". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "ló" 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 #5,433 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ló" and "ls" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ló vs loch". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #5,433 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.