palovspegoTell them apart

Which to use

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

#35,711
“palo” frequency rank
#3,161
“pego” frequency rank
38872
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature palo pego
Definition incêndio, fogo: o ponto mais fundo de um rio, lago, etc

Letter map: palo vs pego

Shared letters muted; letters that set palo and pego apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. palo and pego follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
palo
4 ch
pego

Spelling & dictionary notes on palo vs pego

palo and pego are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38872, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

palo is recorded at frequency rank #35,711, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɑ.lo̞/. pego is at rank #3,161, 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 38872, this pair ranks #27,501 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of palo vs pego

Shared letters: op. Private to "palo": al. Private to "pego": eg.

"palo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "pego" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palo ← aplo · pallo · paol · plao · ppalo
  • pego ← epgo · peggo · peog · pgeo · ppego

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "palo" and "pego" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "palo" or "pego"?
"pego" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,161 in our Portuguese list, against #35,711 for "palo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "palo" and "pego". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "palo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pego" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,501 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "palo" and "pego" 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 #27,501 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