palcovspilãoWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“palco” and “pilão” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#1,793
“palco” frequency rank
#45,522
“pilão” frequency rank
47315
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature palco pilão
Definition plataforma onde se executam (interpretam) peças de teatro ou música mão do almofariz

Where the eye mixes palco and pilão

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. palco (CVCCV) and pilão (CVCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
palco
5 ch
pilão

Look-alike desk: palco vs pilão

A purely visual mix-up. palco (/ˈpaɫ.ku/) and pilão (/pi.ˈlɐ̃w̃/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47315, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

palco is recorded at frequency rank #1,793, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpaɫ.ku/. pilão is at rank #45,522, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pi.ˈlɐ̃w̃/.

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 47315, this pair ranks #17,943 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of palco vs pilão

Shared letters: lop. Private to "palco": ac. Private to "pilão": iã.

"palco" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pilão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palco ← aplco · paclo · palcco · pallco · paloc · placo · ppalco

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "palco" for "pilão" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈpaɫ.ku/ versus /pi.ˈlɐ̃w̃/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "palco" or "pilão" show up more?
"palco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,793 in our Portuguese list, against #45,522 for "pilão". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "palco" and "pilão" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "palco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pilão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #17,943 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "palco" and "pilão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pilão vs platô". 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 #17,943 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