mal
/ˈmaw/
The verdict
“mal” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #319) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #319
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 1,087
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - de forma pouco satisfatória
Corpus desk
Index PT-mal · mal · Portuguese
mal · rank #319 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #319
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,087
- PHOTO-FINISH logo
Nearest frequency peer: logo (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “mal”
Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo
- importante
importante
99,685 corpus weight
- logo
logo
99,683 corpus weight
- mal
mal
99,682 corpus weight
- sob
sob
99,681 corpus weight
- geral
geral
99,680 corpus weight
- lhe
lhe
99,679 corpus weight
What this shows As barras situam “mal” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mal |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | /ˈmaw/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #319 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “mal”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for mal is neighbouring look-alikes ("me", "my", …), not just typos; it is anadverb pronounced /ˈmaw/. Frequency #319 among 1,087 “M” headwords. 4 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No generated misspelling entries exist for mal in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "me", "my", "mi", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct Portuguese form is mal, spelled M-A-L.
Definition
- 1de forma pouco satisfatória
- 2com dificuldades, a muito custo
- 3de forma errônea, com equívocos
- 4de maneira não adequada, imprópria
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mal appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Alimentou-se mal a vida inteira.
O que aconteceu com você? Mal completou a corrida!
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "mal", not the corpus desk frequency band.