maavsmalaTell them apart

Which to use

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

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank
#4,568
“mala” frequency rank
53093
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maa mala
Definition chão, solo bolsa (geralmente de couro ou pano e com cadeado) usada para carregar dinheiro, documentos e outros objetos

Letter map: maa vs mala

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

3 ch
maa
4 ch
mala

Spelling & dictionary notes on maa vs mala

maa and mala 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 53093, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. mala is at rank #4,568, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈma.lɐ/.

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 53093, this pair ranks #12,288 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs mala

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

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mala ← maal · malla · mlaa · mmala

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maa" and "mala" 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.
Which is more common, "maa" or "mala"?
"mala" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,568 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.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "maa" and "mala".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mala" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #12,288 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maa" and "mala" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malva". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #12,288 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