maavsmaçãTell them apart

Which to use

“maa” and “maçã” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank
#7,309
“maçã” frequency rank
55834
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maa maçã
Definition chão, solo o fruto comestível da macieira

Letter map: maa vs maçã

Shared letters muted; letters that set maa and maçã apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. maa runs 3 letters (CVV) against maçã's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
maa
4 ch
maçã

Corpus notes: maa and maçã

maa and maçã are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55834, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. maçã is at rank #7,309, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mɐ.ˈsɐ̃/.

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 55834, this pair ranks #10,346 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs maçã

Shared letters: am. Private to "maa": -. Private to "maçã": ãç.

"maa" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "maçã" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maa" and "maçã" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maa" or "maçã" show up more?
"maçã" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,309 in our Portuguese list, against #48,525 for "maa". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "maa" and "maçã". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "maçã" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #10,346 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maa" and "maçã" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malva". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #10,346 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