Which to use
“to” is a particle and “told” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #164
- “to” frequency rank
- #29,938
- “told” frequency rank
- 30102
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | to | told |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | marca o verbo seguinte como infinitivo | taxa; tarifa (imposto cobrado sobre bens importados ou, em casos mais raros, exportados) |
Letter map: to vs told
Shared letters muted; letters that set to and told apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.
Part-of-speech tell for to / told
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: to is aparticle and toldanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “to” sits inside “told”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30102, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
to is recorded at frequency rank #164, classified as aparticle. told is at rank #29,938, tagged as anoun, pronounced /tɔl/, [tˢʌlˀ], [ˈtʌlˀ].
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 30102, this pair ranks #38,350 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of to vs told
Shared letters: ot. Private to "to": -. Private to "told": dl.
"to" · 2 letters · shape CV · "told" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- told ← otld · tlod · todl · toldd · tolld · ttold
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "to" and "told" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "to" or "told"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "to" and "told".
- Full dictionary entry for "to" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "told" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #38,350 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "to" and "told" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "told vs tosa". 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 #38,350 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.