per vs pó, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“per” is a preposition and “pó” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,775
“per” frequency rank: #3,718
“pó” frequency rank: 9493
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	per	pó
Definition	por	parte da terra formada por pequenos grânulos

Letter map: per vs pó

Shared letters muted; letters that set per and pó apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

per

2 ch

pó

Role in the sentence - per and pó

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: per is apreposition and póanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9493, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

per is recorded at frequency rank #5,775, classified as aprep. pó is at rank #3,718, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɔ/.

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 9493, this pair ranks #63,916 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of per vs pó

Shared letters: p. Private to "per": er. Private to "pó": ó.

"per" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "pó" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "per" and "pó" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "per" is a preposition and "pó" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "per" or "pó"?

"pó" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,718 in our Portuguese list, against #5,775 for "per". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "per" and "pó". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "per" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "pó" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #63,916 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"per" and "pó" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "per vs pix". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #63,916 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.