seção vs sésamo, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#2,496
“seção” frequency rank: #40,349
“sésamo” frequency rank: 42845
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	seção	sésamo
Definition	subdivisão de um capítulo, obra, tratado ou estudo	sésamo

Letter map: seção vs sésamo

Shared letters muted; letters that set seção and sésamo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. seção runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against sésamo's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch

seção

6 ch

sésamo

Pair insight - seção / sésamo

seção and sésamo 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 42845, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

seção is recorded at frequency rank #2,496, classified as anoun. sésamo is at rank #40,349, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɛsa̝mo̝/.

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 42845, this pair ranks #22,868 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of seção vs sésamo

Shared letters: os. Private to "seção": eãç. Private to "sésamo": amé.

"seção" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV · "sésamo" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "seção" and "sésamo" be used interchangeably?

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.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "seção" or "sésamo" show up more?

"seção" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,496 in our Portuguese list, against #40,349 for "sésamo". 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 "seção" and "sésamo". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "seção" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "sésamo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #22,868 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"seção" and "sésamo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sésamo vs sismo". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #22,868 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.