pilãovsplayTell them apart

Which to use

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

#45,522
“pilão” frequency rank
#3,929
“play” frequency rank
49451
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pilão play
Definition mão do almofariz botão que aciona a reprodução de mídia

Letter map: pilão vs play

Shared letters muted; letters that set pilão and play apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. pilão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against play's 4 (CCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
pilão
4 ch
play

Pair insight - pilão / play

pilão and play 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49451, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pilão is recorded at frequency rank #45,522, classified as anoun, pronounced /pi.ˈlɐ̃w̃/. play is at rank #3,929, 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 49451, this pair ranks #15,553 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pilão vs play

Shared letters: lp. Private to "pilão": ioã. Private to "play": ay.

"pilão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "play" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • play ← lpay · paly · playy · pllay · plya · pplay

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pilão" and "play" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pilão" or "play" show up more?
"play" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,929 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.

What to do next

You've compared "pilão" and "play". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pilão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "play" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,553 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pilão" and "play" 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 #15,553 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