no vs num, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#15
“no” frequency rank: #234
“num” frequency rank: 249
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	no	num
Definition	forma enclítica do pronome o quando precedido de forma verbal terminada em som nasal	o mesmo que não

Letter map: no vs num

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

2 ch

3 ch

num

Part-of-speech tell for no / num

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: no is apronoun and numanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 249, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #15, classified as apron. num is at rank #234, tagged as anadv.

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 249, this pair ranks #75,388 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of no vs num

Shared letters: n. Private to "no": o. Private to "num": mu.

"no" · 2 letters · shape CV · "num" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "no" and "num" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "no" or "num" show up more?

"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our Portuguese list, against #234 for "num". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "no" vs "num" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "no" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "num" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #75,388 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"no" and "num" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "no vs noon". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #75,388 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.