poucovspousoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pouco is a adjective, pouso is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pouco” is an adjective and “pouso” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#172
“pouco” frequency rank
#10,774
“pouso” frequency rank
10946
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pouco pouso
Definition presente em baixa quantidade ação de pousar

Letter map: pouco vs pouso

Shared letters muted; letters that set pouco and pouso apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
pouco
5 ch
pouso

Grammar separator: pouco vs pouso

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pouco is anadjective and pousoanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - c in “pouco” becomes s in “pouso”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10946, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pouco is recorded at frequency rank #172, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈpoʊ.kʊ/. pouso is at rank #10,774, 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 10946, this pair ranks #62,016 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pouco vs pouso

Shared letters: opu. Private to "pouco": c. Private to "pouso": s.

"pouco" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "pouso" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • poucoopuco · pocuo · poucco · pouoc · ppouco · puoco
  • pousoopuso · posuo · pouos · pousso · ppouso · puoso

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pouco" for "pouso" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pouco" is an adjective and "pouso" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pouco" or "pouso" show up more?
"pouco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #172 in our Portuguese list, against #10,774 for "pouso". 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 "pouco" and "pouso". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pouco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pouso" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,016 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pouco" and "pouso" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Pluto vs pouso". 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 #62,016 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