novsnousWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“no” and “nous” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#15
“no” frequency rank
#31,892
“nous” frequency rank
31907
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature no nous
Definition forma enclítica do pronome o quando precedido de forma verbal terminada em som nasal nós, nos, pronome pessoal da primeira pessoa do plural.

Letter map: no vs nous

Shared letters muted; letters that set no and nous apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
no
4 ch
nous

Spelling & dictionary notes on no vs nous

no and nous are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “no” sits inside “nous”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31907, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #15, classified as apron. nous is at rank #31,892, tagged as apron, pronounced /nu/.

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 31907, this pair ranks #36,043 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of no vs nous

Shared letters: no. Private to "no": -. Private to "nous": su.

"no" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "nous" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • nousnnous · nosu · nouss · nuos · onus

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "no" for "nous" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “no” sits inside “nous”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "no" vs "nous" - which ranks higher?
"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our Portuguese list, against #31,892 for "nous". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "no" and "nous".

  • Full dictionary entry for "no" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #36,043 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "no" and "nous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noon vs nous". 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 #36,043 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