seçãovsserrãoWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#2,496
“seção” frequency rank
#34,915
“serrão” frequency rank
37411
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature seção serrão
Definition subdivisão de um capítulo, obra, tratado ou estudo bodião da espécie Symphodus pirca

Letter map: seção vs serrão

Shared letters muted; letters that set seção and serrão apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. seção runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against serrão's 6 (CVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
seção
6 ch
serrão

Pair insight - seção / serrão

seção and serrão are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37411, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

seção is recorded at frequency rank #2,496, classified as anoun. serrão is at rank #34,915, tagged as anoun, pronounced /se.'raŋ/.

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 37411, this pair ranks #29,206 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of seção vs serrão

Shared letters: eosã. Private to "seção": ç. Private to "serrão": r.

"seção" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "serrão" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "seção" and "serrão" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "seção" vs "serrão" - which ranks higher?
"seção" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,496 in our Portuguese list, against #34,915 for "serrão". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "seção" vs "serrão" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "seção" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "serrão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #29,206 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "seção" and "serrão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "serias vs serrão". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #29,206 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