provsproleWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pro is a preposition, prole is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pro” is a preposition and “prole” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,173
“pro” frequency rank
#30,688
“prole” frequency rank
31861
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pro prole
Definition para filhos; crianças; descendentes

Letter map: pro vs prole

Shared letters muted; letters that set pro and prole apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
pro
5 ch
prole

Part-of-speech tell for pro / prole

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pro is apreposition and proleanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “pro” sits inside “prole”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31861, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pro is recorded at frequency rank #1,173, classified as aprep, pronounced /ˈprɔ/ ouvir^(fonte ?). prole is at rank #30,688, 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 31861, this pair ranks #36,105 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pro vs prole

Shared letters: opr. Private to "pro": -. Private to "prole": el.

"pro" · 3 letters · shape CCV  ·  "prole" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • proleporle · pprole · prloe · proel · prolle · prrole · rpole

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pro" for "prole" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pro" is a preposition and "prole" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pro" or "prole" show up more?
"pro" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,173 in our Portuguese list, against #30,688 for "prole". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "pro" vs "prole" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pro" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "prole" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #36,105 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pro" and "prole" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pale vs prole". 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 #36,105 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