magrovsmarcoWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#10,924
“magro” frequency rank
#1,754
“marco” frequency rank
12678
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature magro marco
Definition não gordo, não cheio de carnes sinal de demarcação que se põe nos limites territoriais

Letter map: magro vs marco

Shared letters muted; letters that set magro and marco apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
magro
5 ch
marco

Part-of-speech tell for magro / marco

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: magro is anadjective and marcoanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12678, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

magro is recorded at frequency rank #10,924, 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 12678, this pair ranks #59,839 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of magro vs marco

Shared letters: amor. Private to "magro": g. Private to "marco": c.

"magro" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "marco" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • magroamgro · maggro · magor · magrro · margo · mgaro · mmagro
  • marcoamrco · macro · marcco · maroc · marrco · mmarco · mraco

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "magro" and "marco" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "magro" is an adjective and "marco" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "magro" 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 #10,924 for "magro". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "magro" and "marco".

  • Full dictionary entry for "magro" 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 #59,839 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "magro" and "marco" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "magro vs malho". 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 #59,839 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