tengo vs tonto, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“tengo” is a verb and “tonto” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,588
“tengo” frequency rank: #19,014
“tonto” frequency rank: 65602
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	tengo	tonto
Definition	primeira pessoa do singular do presente do indicativo do verbo tener	que sente ou tem tonturas

Letter map: tengo vs tonto

Shared letters muted; letters that set tengo and tonto apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

tengo

5 ch

tonto

Grammar separator: tengo vs tonto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tengo is averb and tontoanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65602, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tengo is recorded at frequency rank #46,588, classified as averb. tonto is at rank #19,014, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈtõ.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 65602, this pair ranks #5,307 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tengo vs tonto

Shared letters: not. Private to "tengo": eg. Private to "tonto": -.

"tengo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "tonto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

tengo ← etngo · tegno · tenggo · tenngo · tenog · tnego · ttengo
tonto ← otnto · tnoto · tonnto · tonot · tontto · totno · ttonto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "tengo" for "tonto" ever safe?

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

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

"tonto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,014 in our Portuguese list, against #46,588 for "tengo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "tengo" and "tonto". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "tengo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tonto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #5,307 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"tengo" and "tonto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "teco vs tengo". 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 #5,307 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.