maavsmanhãWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank
#428
“manhã” frequency rank
48953
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maa manhã
Definition chão, solo período do dia entre o nascer-do-sol e o meio-dia

Letter map: maa vs manhã

Shared letters muted; letters that set maa and manhã apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. maa runs 3 letters (CVV) against manhã's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
maa
5 ch
manhã

Pair insight - maa / manhã

maa and manhã 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48953, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. manhã is at rank #428, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mɐ.ˈɲɐ̃/.

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 48953, this pair ranks #16,159 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs manhã

Shared letters: am. Private to "maa": -. Private to "manhã": hnã.

"maa" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "manhã" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maa" for "manhã" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "maa" vs "manhã" - which ranks higher?
"manhã" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #428 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 "manhã".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "manhã" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,159 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maa" and "manhã" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malva". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #16,159 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