m vs mas, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“m” is a symbol and “mas” is a conjunction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#701
“m” frequency rank: #25
“mas” frequency rank: 726
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	m	mas
Definition	símbolo de metro	conjunção adversativa, indica clara oposição entre ideias

Letter map: m vs mas

Shared letters muted; letters that set m and mas apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

1 ch

3 ch

mas

Role in the sentence - m and mas

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: m is asymbol and masaconjunction. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “m” sits inside “mas”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 726, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

m is recorded at frequency rank #701, classified as asymbol. mas is at rank #25, tagged as aconj, pronounced /ˈmɐʃ/.

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 726, this pair ranks #74,923 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of m vs mas

Shared letters: m. Private to "m": -. Private to "mas": as.

"m" · 1 letters · shape C · "mas" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "m" for "mas" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "m" is a symbol and "mas" a conjunction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "m" or "mas"?

"mas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25 in our Portuguese list, against #701 for "m". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "m" vs "mas" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "m" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "mas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #74,923 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"m" and "mas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "m vs maa". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #74,923 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.