tilvstoloTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#44,136
“til” frequency rank
#17,929
“tolo” frequency rank
62065
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature til tolo
Definition sinal diacrítico (~) utilizado para modificar a pronúncia de determinadas letras no português (indicando nasalização) e em alguns outros idiomas ( bretão ...) sem inteligência ou sem juízo

Letter map: til vs tolo

Shared letters muted; letters that set til and tolo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
til
4 ch
tolo

Grammar separator: til vs tolo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: til is anoun and toloanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62065, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

til is recorded at frequency rank #44,136, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈʧiw/. 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 62065, this pair ranks #6,847 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of til vs tolo

Shared letters: lt. Private to "til": i. Private to "tolo": o.

"til" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "tolo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tolootlo · tloo · tollo · ttolo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "til" and "tolo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "til" is a noun and "tolo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "til" or "tolo"?
"tolo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,929 in our Portuguese list, against #44,136 for "til". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "til" and "tolo". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "til" 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 #6,847 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "til" and "tolo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tifo 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 #6,847 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