thanvsthinWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: than is a conjunction, thin is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“than” is a conjunction and “thin” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,187
“than” frequency rank
#34,948
“thin” frequency rank
48135
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature than thin
Definition que (usado em comparações) delgado

Letter map: than vs thin

Shared letters muted; letters that set than and thin apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
than
4 ch
thin

Role in the sentence - than and thin

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: than is aconjunction and thinanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “than” becomes i in “thin”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48135, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

than is recorded at frequency rank #13,187, classified as aconj. thin is at rank #34,948, tagged as anadj, pronounced /'θɪn/.

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 48135, this pair ranks #17,073 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of than vs thin

Shared letters: hnt. Private to "than": a. Private to "thin": i.

"than" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "thin" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thanhtan · tahn · thann · thhan · thna · tthan
  • thinhtin · thhin · thinn · thni · tihn · tthin

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "than" for "thin" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "than" is a conjunction and "thin" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "than" vs "thin" - which ranks higher?
"than" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,187 in our Portuguese list, against #34,948 for "thin". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "than" and "thin". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "than" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "thin" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #17,073 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "than" and "thin" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thin vs til". 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 #17,073 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