vicevsvilWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#1,298
“vice” frequency rank
#26,593
“vil” frequency rank
27891
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature vice vil
Definition indica aquele que substitui o principal (por exemplo em vice-presidente, vice-reitor, etc) reles

Letter map: vice vs vil

Shared letters muted; letters that set vice and vil apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
vice
3 ch
vil

Part-of-speech tell for vice / vil

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: vice is anoun and vilanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27891, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

vice is recorded at frequency rank #1,298, classified as anoun. vil is at rank #26,593, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈviɫ/.

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 27891, this pair ranks #41,022 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of vice vs vil

Shared letters: iv. Private to "vice": ce. Private to "vil": l.

"vice" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "vil" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • viceivce · vcie · vicce · viec · vvice

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "vice" and "vil" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "vice" is a noun and "vil" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "vice" or "vil"?
"vice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,298 in our Portuguese list, against #26,593 for "vil". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "vice" and "vil". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "vice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "vil" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #41,022 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "vice" and "vil" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "velo vs vil". 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 #41,022 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