playvspolaWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#3,929
“play” frequency rank
#42,156
“pola” frequency rank
46085
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature play pola
Definition botão que aciona a reprodução de mídia estaca

Letter map: play vs pola

Shared letters muted; letters that set play and pola apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
play
4 ch
pola

Pair insight - play / pola

play and pola 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 share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46085, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

play is recorded at frequency rank #3,929, classified as anoun. pola is at rank #42,156, tagged as anoun, pronounced /'pɔ.la/ para o ramo da àrvore.

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 46085, this pair ranks #19,268 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of play vs pola

Shared letters: alp. Private to "play": y. Private to "pola": o.

"play" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "pola" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • playlpay · paly · playy · pllay · plya · pplay
  • polaopla · ploa · poal · polla · ppola

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "play" and "pola" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "play" vs "pola" - which ranks higher?
"play" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,929 in our Portuguese list, against #42,156 for "pola". 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 "play" and "pola". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "play" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pola" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,268 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "play" and "pola" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pola vs Poland". 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 #19,268 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