maa vs mal, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“maa” is a noun and “mal” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank: #319
“mal” frequency rank: 48844
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	maa	mal
Definition	chão, solo	de forma pouco satisfatória

Letter map: maa vs mal

Shared letters muted; letters that set maa and mal apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

maa

3 ch

mal

Grammar separator: maa vs mal

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maa is anoun and malanadverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “maa” becomes l in “mal”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48844, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. mal is at rank #319, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈmaw/.

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 48844, this pair ranks #16,292 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs mal

Shared letters: am. Private to "maa": -. Private to "mal": l.

"maa" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "mal" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maa" for "mal" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maa" is a noun and "mal" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maa" or "mal" show up more?

"mal" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #319 in our Portuguese list, against #48,525 for "maa". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "mal" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #16,292 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"maa" and "mal" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malva". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #16,292 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.