losevslsConfusable pair

Quick tell: lose is a adjective, ls is an article, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#27,921
“lose” frequency rank
#27,923
“ls” frequency rank
55844
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lose ls
Definition frouxo os, artigo definido masculino plural:

Letter map: lose vs ls

Shared letters muted; letters that set lose and ls apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
lose
2 ch
ls

Part-of-speech tell for lose / ls

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lose is anadjective and lsanarticle. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55844, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lose is recorded at frequency rank #27,921, classified as anadj. 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 55844, this pair ranks #10,340 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of lose vs ls

Shared letters: ls. Private to "lose": eo. Private to "ls": -.

"lose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "ls" · 2 letters · shape CC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • losellose · loes · losse · lsoe · olse

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lose" for "ls" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lose" is an adjective and "ls" an article, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "lose" vs "ls" - which ranks higher?
"lose" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,921 in our Portuguese list, against #27,923 for "ls". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "lose" vs "ls" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lose" 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 #10,340 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lose" and "ls" 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 #10,340 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