macacão vs maciço, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#23,720
“macacão” frequency rank: #19,489
“maciço” frequency rank: 43209
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	macacão	maciço
Definition	macaco grande	compacto; sem vazios internos

Letter map: macacão vs maciço

Shared letters muted; letters that set macacão and maciço apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. macacão runs 7 letters (CVCVCVV) against maciço's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch

macacão

6 ch

maciço

Role in the sentence - macacão and maciço

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: macacão is anoun and maciçoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43209, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

macacão is recorded at frequency rank #23,720, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɐ.kɐ.ˈkɐ̃w̃/. maciço is at rank #19,489, tagged as anadj.

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 43209, this pair ranks #22,458 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of macacão vs maciço

Shared letters: acmo. Private to "macacão": ã. Private to "maciço": iç.

"macacão" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV · "maciço" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "macacão" for "maciço" ever safe?

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

Frequency check: "macacão" vs "maciço" - which ranks higher?

"maciço" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,489 in our Portuguese list, against #23,720 for "macacão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "macacão" and "maciço". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "macacão" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "maciço" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #22,458 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"macacão" and "maciço" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "macacão vs machão". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #22,458 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.