murrovsmutoTell them apart

Quick tell: murro is a noun, muto is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“murro” is a noun and “muto” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,335
“murro” frequency rank
#43,549
“muto” frequency rank
60884
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature murro muto
Definition pancada desferida com a mão fechada mudar algo de sítio, remover.

Where the eye mixes murro and muto

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
murro
4 ch
muto

Why the eye confuses murro with muto

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: murro is /ˈmu.Ru/ while muto is /ˈmuː.toː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60884, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

murro is recorded at frequency rank #17,335, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmu.Ru/. muto is at rank #43,549, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈmuː.toː/.

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 60884, this pair ranks #7,435 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of murro vs muto

Shared letters: mou. Private to "murro": r. Private to "muto": t.

"murro" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "muto" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • murrommurro · mruro · muror · umrro
  • mutommuto · mtuo · muot · mutto · umto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "murro" for "muto" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "murro" is a noun and "muto" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "murro" or "muto" show up more?
"murro" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,335 in our Portuguese list, against #43,549 for "muto". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "murro" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "muto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #7,435 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "murro" and "muto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "muso vs muto". 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 #7,435 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