ondavsoniWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: onda is a noun, oni is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“onda” is a noun and “oni” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,059
“onda” frequency rank
#49,618
“oni” frequency rank
51677
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature onda oni
Definition elevação e depressão da camada superficial de uma massa líquida; vaga pronome pessoal do caso nominativo da terceira pessoa do plural de gênero masculino pessoal, eles

Letter map: onda vs oni

Shared letters muted; letters that set onda and oni apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
onda
3 ch
oni

Role in the sentence - onda and oni

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: onda is anoun and oniapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51677, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

onda is recorded at frequency rank #2,059, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈõ.dɐ/. oni is at rank #49,618, tagged as apron.

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 51677, this pair ranks #13,405 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of onda vs oni

Shared letters: no. Private to "onda": ad. Private to "oni": i.

"onda" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "oni" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ondanoda · odna · onad · ondda · onnda

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "onda" for "oni" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "onda" is a noun and "oni" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "onda" or "oni"?
"onda" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,059 in our Portuguese list, against #49,618 for "oni". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "onda" and "oni". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "onda" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "oni" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,405 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "onda" and "oni" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "oni vs ons". 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 #13,405 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