Which to use
“malo” is an adjective and “melão” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #41,118
- “malo” frequency rank
- #17,854
- “melão” frequency rank
- 58972
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | malo | melão |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | mau, malévolo: | o fruto do meloeiro, Cucumis melo |
Letter map: malo vs melão
Shared letters muted; letters that set malo and melão apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. malo runs 4 letters (CVCV) against melão's 5 (CVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Grammar separator: malo vs melão
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: malo is anadjective and melãoanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58972, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
malo is recorded at frequency rank #41,118, classified as anadj. melão is at rank #17,854, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mɨ.ˈlɐ̃w̃/.
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 58972, this pair ranks #8,447 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of malo vs melão
Shared letters: lmo. Private to "malo": a. Private to "melão": eã.
"malo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "melão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- malo ← amlo · mallo · maol · mlao · mmalo
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "malo" for "melão" ever safe?
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "malo" or "melão" show up more?
Useful next steps
You've compared "malo" and "melão". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "malo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "melão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #8,447 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "malo" and "melão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs malo". 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 #8,447 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.