todo vs tombo, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#111
“todo” frequency rank: #19,867
“tombo” frequency rank: 19978
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	todo	tombo
Definition	completo	ato ou efeito de tombar; queda

Where the eye mixes todo and tombo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch

todo

5 ch

tombo

Visual trap between todo and tombo

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: todo is /ˈto.du/ while tombo is /ˈtõ.bu/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19978, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

todo is recorded at frequency rank #111, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈto.du/. tombo is at rank #19,867, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈtõ.bu/.

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 19978, this pair ranks #50,636 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of todo vs tombo

Shared letters: ot. Private to "todo": d. Private to "tombo": bm.

"todo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "tombo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

todo ← otdo · tdoo · toddo · tood · ttodo
tombo ← otmbo · tmobo · tobmo · tombbo · tommbo · tomob · ttombo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "todo" for "tombo" ever safe?

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

Frequency check: "todo" vs "tombo" - which ranks higher?

"todo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #111 in our Portuguese list, against #19,867 for "tombo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

Full dictionary entry for "todo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tombo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #50,636 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"todo" and "tombo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tampo vs tombo". 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 #50,636 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.