tainhavstinhamWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#47,633
“tainha” frequency rank
#904
“tinham” frequency rank
48537
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tainha tinham
Definition peixe da família dos mugilídeos, também chamado fataça, mugem, etc. terceira pessoa do plural do pretérito imperfeito do indicativo do verbo ter

Letter map: tainha vs tinham

Shared letters muted; letters that set tainha and tinham apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. tainha (CVVCCV) and tinham (CVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
tainha
6 ch
tinham

Part-of-speech tell for tainha / tinham

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tainha is anoun and tinhamaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48537, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tainha is recorded at frequency rank #47,633, classified as anoun, pronounced /tɐ.ˈi.ɲɐ/. tinham is at rank #904, 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 48537, this pair ranks #16,628 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tainha vs tinham

Shared letters: ahint. Private to "tainha": -. Private to "tinham": m.

"tainha" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "tinham" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tainha ← atinha · taihna · tainah · tainhha · tainnha · taniha · tianha · ttainha
  • tinham ← itnham · tihnam · tinahm · tinhamm · tinhham · tinhma · tinnham · tniham

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tainha" and "tinham" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tainha" is a noun and "tinham" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "tainha" or "tinham" show up more?
"tinham" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #904 in our Portuguese list, against #47,633 for "tainha". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "tainha" and "tinham".

  • Full dictionary entry for "tainha" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tinham" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,628 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tainha" and "tinham" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tainha vs trinca". 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 #16,628 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