salãovssaldarWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: salão is a noun, saldar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“salão” is a noun and “saldar” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,751
“salão” frequency rank
#38,011
“saldar” frequency rank
40762
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature salão saldar
Definition sala grande pagar a totalidade

Letter map: salão vs saldar

Shared letters muted; letters that set salão and saldar apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. salão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against saldar's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
salão
6 ch
saldar

Role in the sentence - salão and saldar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: salão is anoun and saldaraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40762, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

salão is recorded at frequency rank #2,751, classified as anoun, pronounced /sɐ.ˈlɐ̃w̃/. saldar is at rank #38,011, tagged as averb.

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 40762, this pair ranks #25,288 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of salão vs saldar

Shared letters: als. Private to "salão": oã. Private to "saldar": dr.

"salão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "saldar" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • saldar ← asldar · sadlar · saladr · saldarr · salddar · saldra · salldar · sladar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "salão" for "saldar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "salão" is a noun and "saldar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "salão" or "saldar" show up more?
"salão" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,751 in our Portuguese list, against #38,011 for "saldar". 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 "salão" and "saldar". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "salão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "saldar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,288 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "salão" and "saldar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "saldar vs sondar". 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 #25,288 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