losevsloveConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#27,921
“lose” frequency rank
#1,849
“love” frequency rank
29770
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lose love
Definition frouxo amor

Letter map: lose vs love

Shared letters muted; letters that set lose and love apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
lose
4 ch
love

Role in the sentence - lose and love

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lose is anadjective and loveanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - s in “lose” becomes v in “love”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29770, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lose is recorded at frequency rank #27,921, classified as anadj. love is at rank #1,849, 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 29770, this pair ranks #38,802 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lose vs love

Shared letters: elo. Private to "lose": s. Private to "love": v.

"lose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • losellose · loes · losse · lsoe · olse
  • lovellove · loev · lovve · lvoe · olve

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "lose" and "love" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lose" is an adjective and "love" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "lose" or "love" show up more?
"love" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,849 in our Portuguese list, against #27,921 for "lose". 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 "lose" and "love".

  • Full dictionary entry for "lose" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "love" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,802 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lose" and "love" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "loch vs lose". 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 #38,802 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