lockvsloucoTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#22,711
“lock” frequency rank
#1,649
“louco” frequency rank
24360
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lock louco
Definition fechadura que perdeu a razão, maluco, demente, vesano, amente

Letter map: lock vs louco

Shared letters muted; letters that set lock and louco apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
lock
5 ch
louco

Part-of-speech tell for lock / louco

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lock is anoun and loucoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24360, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lock is recorded at frequency rank #22,711, classified as anoun, pronounced /lɒk/. louco is at rank #1,649, 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 24360, this pair ranks #45,273 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lock vs louco

Shared letters: clo. Private to "lock": k. Private to "louco": u.

"lock" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "louco" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • locklcok · llock · locck · lockk · lokc · olck
  • loucollouco · locuo · loucco · louoc · luoco · oluco

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lock" for "louco" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lock" is a noun and "louco" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "lock" vs "louco" - which ranks higher?
"louco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,649 in our Portuguese list, against #22,711 for "lock". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "lock" and "louco".

  • Full dictionary entry for "lock" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "louco" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #45,273 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lock" and "louco" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "loch vs lock". 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 #45,273 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