no vs nun, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#15
“no” frequency rank: #39,280
“nun” frequency rank: 39295
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	no	nun
Definition	forma enclítica do pronome o quando precedido de forma verbal terminada em som nasal	agora, neste momento:

Letter map: no vs nun

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

2 ch

3 ch

nun

Role in the sentence - no and nun

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: no is apronoun and nunanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39295, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

no is recorded at frequency rank #15, classified as apron. nun is at rank #39,280, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈnuːn/.

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 39295, this pair ranks #27,000 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of no vs nun

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

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

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

"no" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15 in our Portuguese list, against #39,280 for "nun". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "no" vs "nun" 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 "nun" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #27,000 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"no" and "nun" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "noon vs nun". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #27,000 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.