pacasvspraçaWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pacas is a adverb, praça is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pacas” is an adverb and “praça” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,064
“pacas” frequency rank
#1,223
“praça” frequency rank
44287
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pacas praça
Definition muito espaço público e espaçoso rodeado de edifícios; rossio; mercado; circo

Letter map: pacas vs praça

Shared letters muted; letters that set pacas and praça apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
pacas
5 ch
praça

Grammar separator: pacas vs praça

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pacas is anadverb and praçaanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44287, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pacas is recorded at frequency rank #43,064, classified as anadv. praça is at rank #1,223, tagged as anoun.

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 44287, this pair ranks #21,217 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pacas vs praça

Shared letters: ap. Private to "pacas": cs. Private to "praça": .

"pacas" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "praça" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pacasapcas · paacs · pacass · paccas · pacsa · pcaas · ppacas

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pacas" for "praça" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pacas" is an adverb and "praça" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pacas" or "praça"?
"praça" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,223 in our Portuguese list, against #43,064 for "pacas". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "pacas" and "praça". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pacas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "praça" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,217 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pacas" and "praça" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pacas vs pança". 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 #21,217 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