mater
/ma.tɛʁ/
The verdict
“mater” is a moderately-common Portuguese word, ranked #31,868 in Portuguese word frequency and used as a noun.
- #31,868
- frequency rank, Portuguese
- 5
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - maternidade, estabelecimento público ou privado destinado a receber mulheres que estão a ponto de dar a luz
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 | mater |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ma.tɛʁ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #31,868 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “mater” sits in Portuguese frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Portuguese entry for mater is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ma.tɛʁ/. Corpus data places it at rank #31,868 in overall Portuguese word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "maternidade, estabelecimento público ou privado destinado a receber mulheres que estão a ponto de dar a luz".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for mater, with forms such as "amter", "maetr", and "materr". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mer", "mato", "mote", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Portuguese form is mater, spelled M-A-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1maternidade, estabelecimento público ou privado destinado a receber mulheres que estão a ponto de dar a luz
Synonyms
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amter,maetr,materr,mmater,mtaer
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of mater - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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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Using “mater”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Portuguese spelling is M-A-T-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ma.tɛʁ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “mer” - see the side-by-side comparison. mater vs mer
- Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.