pingovspinhãoWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#17,885
“pingo” frequency rank
#31,497
“pinhão” frequency rank
49382
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pingo pinhão
Definition gota; gotejamento; goteira o fruto do pinheiro-manso

Letter map: pingo vs pinhão

Shared letters muted; letters that set pingo and pinhão apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. pingo runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against pinhão's 6 (CVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
pingo
6 ch
pinhão

Corpus notes: pingo and pinhão

pingo and pinhão 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 49382, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pingo is recorded at frequency rank #17,885, classified as anoun. pinhão is at rank #31,497, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pi.ˈɲɐ̃w̃/.

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 49382, this pair ranks #15,639 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pingo vs pinhão

Shared letters: inop. Private to "pingo": g. Private to "pinhão": hã.

"pingo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pinhão" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pingo ← ipngo · pigno · pinggo · pinngo · pinog · pnigo · ppingo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pingo" and "pinhão" be used interchangeably?
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.
Frequency check: "pingo" vs "pinhão" - which ranks higher?
"pingo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,885 in our Portuguese list, against #31,497 for "pinhão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "pingo" and "pinhão". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pingo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pinhão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,639 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pingo" and "pinhão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pilão vs pinhão". 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 #15,639 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