maavsmassaTell them apart

Quick tell: maa is a noun, massa is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank
#964
“massa” frequency rank
49489
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maa massa
Definition chão, solo bom, legal, agradável, divertido:

Letter map: maa vs massa

Shared letters muted; letters that set maa and massa apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
maa
5 ch
massa

Part-of-speech tell for maa / massa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maa is anoun and massaanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49489, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. massa is at rank #964, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈma.sɐ/.

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 49489, this pair ranks #15,508 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs massa

Shared letters: am. Private to "maa": -. Private to "massa": s.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • massaamssa · masa · masas · mmassa · msasa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maa" for "massa" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maa" is a noun and "massa" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maa" or "massa" show up more?
"massa" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #964 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "massa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,508 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maa" and "massa" 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 #15,508 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