show vs só, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“show” is an intj and “só” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#778
“show” frequency rank: #50
“só” frequency rank: 828
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	show	só
Definition	expressa apreço	solitário, sem companhia, sem círculo social

Letter map: show vs só

Shared letters muted; letters that set show and só apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

4 ch

show

2 ch

só

Part-of-speech tell for show / só

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: show is anintj and sóanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 828, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

show is recorded at frequency rank #778, classified as anintj. só is at rank #50, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈsɔ/.

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 828, this pair ranks #74,810 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of show vs só

Shared letters: s. Private to "show": how. Private to "só": ó.

"show" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "só" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

show ← hsow · shhow · showw · shwo · sohw · sshow

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "show" and "só" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "show" is an intj and "só" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

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

"só" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #50 in our Portuguese list, against #778 for "show". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "show" and "só". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "show" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "só" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #74,810 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"show" and "só" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "só vs soap". 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 #74,810 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.