no vs nu, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“no” is a pronoun and “nu” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15
“no” frequency rank: #5,663
“nu” frequency rank: 5678
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	no	nu
Definition	forma enclítica do pronome o quando precedido de forma verbal terminada em som nasal	despido, em pelo, sem roupas

Letter map: no vs nu

Shared letters muted; letters that set no and nu apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

Role in the sentence - no and nu

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: no is apronoun and nuanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - o in “no” becomes u in “nu”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5678, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #15, classified as apron. nu is at rank #5,663, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈnu/.

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 5678, this pair ranks #68,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of no vs nu

Shared letters: n. Private to "no": o. Private to "nu": u.

"no" · 2 letters · shape CV · "nu" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "no" for "nu" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "no" is a pronoun and "nu" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "no" vs "nu" - which ranks higher?

"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our Portuguese list, against #5,663 for "nu". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "no" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "nu" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #68,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"no" and "nu" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "no vs noon". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #68,893 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.