talãovstoloWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#44,612
“talão” frequency rank
#17,929
“tolo” frequency rank
62541
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature talão tolo
Definition bloco de folhas destacáveis sem inteligência ou sem juízo

Letter map: talão vs tolo

Shared letters muted; letters that set talão and tolo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. talão runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against tolo's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
talão
4 ch
tolo

Grammar separator: talão vs tolo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: talão is anoun and toloanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62541, 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/. tolo is at rank #17,929, 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 62541, this pair ranks #6,613 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of talão vs tolo

Shared letters: lot. Private to "talão": aã. Private to "tolo": -.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tolo ← otlo · tloo · tollo · ttolo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "talão" and "tolo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "talão" is a noun and "tolo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "talão" or "tolo" show up more?
"tolo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,929 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

Pair "talão" vs "tolo" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "talão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tolo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,613 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "talão" and "tolo" 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 #6,613 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