maavsmoConfusable pair

Quick tell: maa is a noun, mo is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,525
“maa” frequency rank
#4,745
“mo” frequency rank
53270
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maa mo
Definition chão, solo combinação de me (pronome pessoal oblíquo átono) e o (pronome pessoal oblíquo átono, pronome demonstrativo masculino ou pronome demonstrativo neutro)

Letter map: maa vs mo

Shared letters muted; letters that set maa and mo apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
maa
2 ch
mo

Part-of-speech tell for maa / mo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maa is anoun and moapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53270, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maa is recorded at frequency rank #48,525, classified as anoun. mo is at rank #4,745, tagged as apron, pronounced /mo/.

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 53270, this pair ranks #12,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maa vs mo

Shared letters: m. Private to "maa": a. Private to "mo": o.

"maa" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "mo" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maa" and "mo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maa" is a noun and "mo" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maa" or "mo" show up more?
"mo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,745 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

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "maa" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #12,161 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maa" and "mo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malva". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #12,161 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