talãovstatoWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#44,612
“talão” frequency rank
#24,471
“tato” frequency rank
69083
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature talão tato
Definition bloco de folhas destacáveis gago

Where the eye mixes talão and tato

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. talão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against tato's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
talão
4 ch
tato

Visual trap between talão and tato

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: talão is /tɐ.ˈlɐ̃w̃/ while tato is /ˈta.tu/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69083, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

talão is recorded at frequency rank #44,612, classified as anoun, pronounced /tɐ.ˈlɐ̃w̃/. tato is at rank #24,471, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈta.tu/.

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 69083, this pair ranks #4,055 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of talão vs tato

Shared letters: aot. Private to "talão": lã. Private to "tato": -.

"talão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "tato" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tato ← atto · taot · tatto · ttao · ttato

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "talão" for "tato" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "talão" is a noun and "tato" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "talão" or "tato" show up more?
"tato" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,471 in our Portuguese list, against #44,612 for "talão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "talão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tato" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,055 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "talão" and "tato" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "talão vs travão". 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 #4,055 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