pagãovspaloWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pagão is a adjective, palo is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pagão” is an adjective and “palo” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#28,306
“pagão” frequency rank
#35,711
“palo” frequency rank
64017
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pagão palo
Definition diz-se de pessoa não batizada incêndio, fogo:

Letter map: pagão vs palo

Shared letters muted; letters that set pagão and palo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. pagão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against palo's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
pagão
4 ch
palo

Part-of-speech tell for pagão / palo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pagão is anadjective and paloanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64017, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pagão is recorded at frequency rank #28,306, classified as anadj. palo is at rank #35,711, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɑ.lo̞/.

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 64017, this pair ranks #5,949 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pagão vs palo

Shared letters: aop. Private to "pagão": gã. Private to "palo": l.

"pagão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "palo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palo ← aplo · pallo · paol · plao · ppalo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pagão" and "palo" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pagão" is an adjective and "palo" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pagão" vs "palo" - which ranks higher?
"pagão" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,306 in our Portuguese list, against #35,711 for "palo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "pagão" vs "palo" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pagão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "palo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,949 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pagão" and "palo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "palo vs pilão". 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 #5,949 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