madrevsmanéWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#9,219
“madre” frequency rank
#16,814
“mané” frequency rank
26033
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature madre mané
Definition mãe pessoa boba, tolo

Letter map: madre vs mané

Shared letters muted; letters that set madre and mané apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

5 ch
madre
4 ch
mané

Corpus notes: madre and mané

madre and mané 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26033, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

madre is recorded at frequency rank #9,219, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈma.dɾɨ/. mané is at rank #16,814, tagged as anoun.

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 26033, this pair ranks #43,191 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of madre vs mané

Shared letters: am. Private to "madre": der. Private to "mané": .

"madre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "mané" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • madreamdre · maddre · mader · madrre · marde · mdare · mmadre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "madre" for "mané" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 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: "madre" vs "mané" - which ranks higher?
"madre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,219 in our Portuguese list, against #16,814 for "mané". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "madre" vs "mané" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "madre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mané" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,191 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "madre" and "mané" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mané". 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 #43,191 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