soirvssósWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: soir is a noun, sós is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“soir” is a noun and “sós” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,619
“soir” frequency rank
#16,887
“sós” frequency rank
64506
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soir sós
Definition noite (período entre o anoitecer e a meia-noite) plural de só

Letter map: soir vs sós

Shared letters muted; letters that set soir and sós apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. soir runs 4 letters (CVVC) against sós's 3 (CVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
soir
3 ch
sós

Part-of-speech tell for soir / sós

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: soir is anoun and sósanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64506, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soir is recorded at frequency rank #47,619, classified as anoun, pronounced \swaʁ\. sós is at rank #16,887, tagged as anadj.

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 64506, this pair ranks #5,753 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of soir vs sós

Shared letters: s. Private to "soir": ior. Private to "sós": ó.

"soir" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "sós" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soir ← osir · sior · soirr · sori · ssoir

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "soir" and "sós" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "soir" is a noun and "sós" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "soir" or "sós" show up more?
"sós" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,887 in our Portuguese list, against #47,619 for "soir". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "soir" and "sós".

  • Full dictionary entry for "soir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sós" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,753 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soir" and "sós" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soap vs soir". 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 #5,753 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