mafagafo
Portuguese, noun
mafagafo is spelled M-A-F-A-G-A-F-O (8 letters) and appears about once in every 76 million words in written Portuguese, the 239,085th most frequent Portuguese word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). Mafagafo is a Portuguese masculine noun meaning “a meaningless word used in tongue-twisters; often this word is converted in various forms and derivations to add in the tongue twister…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
What does mafagafo mean in English?
noun
- 1
masculinea meaningless word used in tongue-twisters; often this word is converted in various forms and derivations to add in the tongue twister: mafagafinho (diminutive), mafagafar (verb), mafagafigador (agent noun), etc.
Em um ninho de mafagafos, tinha sete mafagafinhos, quem amafagafigar os mafagafinhos, um bom amafagafigador será.
Source: English Wiktionary, Portuguese section, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Forms of mafagafo
- mafagafos plural
Source: English Wiktionary and Portuguese Wiktionary (Wikcionário) (dumps of September 2, 2026 and September 1, 2026).
How common is mafagafo in Portuguese?
mafagafo appears about once in every 76 million words in written Portuguese.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).