povovspoxaTell them apart

Quick tell: povo is a noun, poxa is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“povo” is a noun and “poxa” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#432
“povo” frequency rank
#20,097
“poxa” frequency rank
20529
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature povo poxa
Definition conjunto dos habitantes de um país, de uma cidade, de uma localidade, etc indica surpresa, admiração, irritação

Letter map: povo vs poxa

Shared letters muted; letters that set povo and poxa apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. povo and poxa follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
povo
4 ch
poxa

Part-of-speech tell for povo / poxa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: povo is anoun and poxaanintj. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20529, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

povo is recorded at frequency rank #432, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpo.vu/. poxa is at rank #20,097, tagged as anintj.

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 20529, this pair ranks #49,961 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of povo vs poxa

Shared letters: op. Private to "povo": v. Private to "poxa": ax.

"povo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "poxa" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • povo ← opvo · poov · povvo · ppovo · pvoo
  • poxa ← opxa · poax · poxxa · ppoxa · pxoa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "povo" for "poxa" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "povo" is a noun and "poxa" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "povo" or "poxa"?
"povo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #432 in our Portuguese list, against #20,097 for "poxa". 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 "povo" and "poxa". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "povo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "poxa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,961 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "povo" and "poxa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pix vs poxa". 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 #49,961 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