maciçovsmarcoConfusable pair

Quick tell: maciço is a adjective, marco is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#19,489
“maciço” frequency rank
#1,754
“marco” frequency rank
21243
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maciço marco
Definition compacto; sem vazios internos sinal de demarcação que se põe nos limites territoriais

Letter map: maciço vs marco

Shared letters muted; letters that set maciço and marco apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. maciço runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against marco's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
maciço
5 ch
marco

Grammar separator: maciço vs marco

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maciço is anadjective and marcoanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21243, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maciço is recorded at frequency rank #19,489, classified as anadj. marco is at rank #1,754, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmaɾ.ku/.

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 21243, this pair ranks #49,078 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maciço vs marco

Shared letters: acmo. Private to "maciço": iç. Private to "marco": r.

"maciço" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "marco" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marco ← amrco · macro · marcco · maroc · marrco · mmarco · mraco

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maciço" and "marco" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maciço" is an adjective and "marco" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maciço" or "marco" show up more?
"marco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,754 in our Portuguese list, against #19,489 for "maciço". 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 "maciço" and "marco".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maciço" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marco" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,078 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maciço" and "marco" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "machão vs maciço". 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 #49,078 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