maiovsmemoTell them apart

Quick tell: maio is a noun, memo is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maio” is a noun and “memo” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#523
“maio” frequency rank
#35,681
“memo” frequency rank
36204
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maio memo
Definition quinto mês do ano civil, formado por 31 dias mesmo

Letter map: maio vs memo

Shared letters muted; letters that set maio and memo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. maio (CVVV) and memo (CVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
maio
4 ch
memo

Part-of-speech tell for maio / memo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maio is anoun and memoanadverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36204, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maio is recorded at frequency rank #523, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmaj.ju/. memo is at rank #35,681, tagged as anadv.

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 36204, this pair ranks #30,671 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maio vs memo

Shared letters: mo. Private to "maio": ai. Private to "memo": e.

"maio" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "memo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maio ← amio · maoi · miao · mmaio
  • memo ← emmo · memmo · meom · mmemo · mmeo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maio" and "memo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maio" is a noun and "memo" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "maio" or "memo" show up more?
"maio" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #523 in our Portuguese list, against #35,681 for "memo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "maio" and "memo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maio" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "memo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #30,671 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maio" and "memo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "memo vs muso". 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 #30,671 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