pensovspingoTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#1,253
“penso” frequency rank
#17,885
“pingo” frequency rank
19138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature penso pingo
Definition inclinado; pendido ou de mau jeito gota; gotejamento; goteira

Letter map: penso vs pingo

Shared letters muted; letters that set penso and pingo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
penso
5 ch
pingo

Part-of-speech tell for penso / pingo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: penso is anadjective and pingoanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

penso is recorded at frequency rank #1,253, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈpẽ.su/. pingo is at rank #17,885, 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 19138, this pair ranks #51,675 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of penso vs pingo

Shared letters: nop. Private to "penso": es. Private to "pingo": gi.

"penso" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pingo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pensoepnso · pennso · penos · pensso · pesno · pneso · ppenso
  • pingoipngo · pigno · pinggo · pinngo · pinog · pnigo · ppingo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "penso" and "pingo" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "penso" is an adjective and "pingo" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "penso" or "pingo" show up more?
"penso" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,253 in our Portuguese list, against #17,885 for "pingo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "penso" vs "pingo" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "penso" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pingo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #51,675 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "penso" and "pingo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pilão vs pingo". 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 #51,675 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