tomévstosseTell them apart

Quick tell: tomé is a verb, tosse is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tomé” is a verb and “tosse” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,602
“tomé” frequency rank
#12,572
“tosse” frequency rank
17174
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tomé tosse
Definition primeira pessoa do singular no pretérito do indicativo do verbo tomar; tomei expiração brusca, convulsa e ruidosa do ar contido nos pulmões

Letter map: tomé vs tosse

Shared letters muted; letters that set tomé and tosse apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. tomé runs 4 letters (CVCV) against tosse's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
tomé
5 ch
tosse

Part-of-speech tell for tomé / tosse

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tomé is averb and tosseanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17174, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tomé is recorded at frequency rank #4,602, classified as averb. tosse is at rank #12,572, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈtɔ.sɨ/.

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 17174, this pair ranks #54,153 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of tomé vs tosse

Shared letters: ot. Private to "tomé": mé. Private to "tosse": es.

"tomé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "tosse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tosse ← otsse · tose · toses · tsose · ttosse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tomé" and "tosse" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tomé" is a verb and "tosse" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "tomé" or "tosse" show up more?
"tomé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,602 in our Portuguese list, against #12,572 for "tosse". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "tomé" vs "tosse" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tomé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tosse" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #54,153 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tomé" and "tosse" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tosa vs tosse". 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 #54,153 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