placavspoçaWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#3,510
“placa” frequency rank
#29,093
“poça” frequency rank
32603
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature placa poça
Definition peça de materiais diversos longa e larga mas de pouca espessura cavidade pouco profunda onde se acumula água

Where the eye mixes placa and poça

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
placa
4 ch
poça

Look-alike desk: placa vs poça

A purely visual mix-up. placa (/ˈpla.kɐ/) and poça (/ˈpo.sɐ/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32603, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

placa is recorded at frequency rank #3,510, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpla.kɐ/. poça is at rank #29,093, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpo.sɐ/.

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 32603, this pair ranks #35,162 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of placa vs poça

Shared letters: ap. Private to "placa": cl. Private to "poça": .

"placa" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "poça" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • placalpaca · palca · plaac · placca · plcaa · pllaca · pplaca

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "placa" and "poça" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ˈpla.kɐ/ versus /ˈpo.sɐ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "placa" vs "poça" - which ranks higher?
"placa" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,510 in our Portuguese list, against #29,093 for "poça". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "placa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "poça" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,162 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "placa" and "poça" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paçoca vs poça". 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 #35,162 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