manvsmaskWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: man is a pronoun, mask is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“man” is a pronoun and “mask” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,736
“man” frequency rank
#36,537
“mask” frequency rank
39273
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature man mask
Definition se (atua como partícula de indeterminação do sujeito): máscara

Letter map: man vs mask

Shared letters muted; letters that set man and mask apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
man
4 ch
mask

Part-of-speech tell for man / mask

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: man is apronoun and maskanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39273, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

man is recorded at frequency rank #2,736, classified as apron. mask is at rank #36,537, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mæsk/.

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 39273, this pair ranks #27,029 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of man vs mask

Shared letters: am. Private to "man": n. Private to "mask": ks.

"man" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "mask" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maskamsk · maks · maskk · massk · mmask · msak

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "man" for "mask" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "man" is a pronoun and "mask" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "man" vs "mask" - which ranks higher?
"man" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,736 in our Portuguese list, against #36,537 for "mask". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "man" vs "mask" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "man" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mask" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,029 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "man" and "mask" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mask". 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 #27,029 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