policevspriceWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#18,149
“police” frequency rank
#10,425
“price” frequency rank
28574
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature police price
Definition polícia (instituição) preço

Where the eye mixes police and price

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. police runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against price's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
police
5 ch
price

Look-alike desk: police vs price

A purely visual mix-up. police (pəˈliːs/) and price (/pɹaɪs/) 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 28574, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

police is recorded at frequency rank #18,149, classified as anoun, pronounced pəˈliːs/. price is at rank #10,425, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹaɪs/.

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 28574, this pair ranks #40,237 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of police vs price

Shared letters: ceip. Private to "police": lo. Private to "price": r.

"police" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "price" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • police ← oplice · ploice · poilce · polcie · policce · poliec · pollice · ppolice
  • price ← pirce · pprice · prcie · pricce · priec · prrice · rpice

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "police" and "price" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (pəˈliːs/ versus /pɹaɪs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "police" or "price"?
"price" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,425 in our Portuguese list, against #18,149 for "police". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "police" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "price" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,237 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "police" and "price" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "polaca vs police". 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 #40,237 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