onovsouroWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ono is a pronoun, ouro is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ono” is a pronoun and “ouro” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,444
“ono” frequency rank
#876
“ouro” frequency rank
38320
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ono ouro
Definition pronome pessoal neutro do caso nominativo da terceira pessoa do singular da cor de ouro

Letter map: ono vs ouro

Shared letters muted; letters that set ono and ouro apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ono
4 ch
ouro

Part-of-speech tell for ono / ouro

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ono is apronoun and ouroanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38320, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ono is recorded at frequency rank #37,444, classified as apron. ouro is at rank #876, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈow.ɾu/, /ˈo.ɾu/.

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 38320, this pair ranks #28,155 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ono vs ouro

Shared letters: o. Private to "ono": n. Private to "ouro": ru.

"ono" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "ouro" · 4 letters · shape VVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ourooruo · ouor · ourro · uoro

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ono" and "ouro" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ono" is a pronoun and "ouro" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ono" or "ouro" show up more?
"ouro" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #876 in our Portuguese list, against #37,444 for "ono". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "ono" vs "ouro" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ono" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ouro" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #28,155 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ono" and "ouro" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "oni vs ono". 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 #28,155 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