manévsmateConfusable pair

Quick tell: mané is a noun, mate is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#16,814
“mané” frequency rank
#7,048
“mate” frequency rank
23862
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mané mate
Definition pessoa boba, tolo sem brilho

Letter map: mané vs mate

Shared letters muted; letters that set mané and mate apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. mané and mate follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
mané
4 ch
mate

Part-of-speech tell for mané / mate

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mané is anoun and mateanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23862, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mané is recorded at frequency rank #16,814, classified as anoun. mate is at rank #7,048, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈma.tɨ/.

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 23862, this pair ranks #45,877 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mané vs mate

Shared letters: am. Private to "mané": né. Private to "mate": et.

"mané" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mate" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mate ← amte · maet · matte · mmate · mtae

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mané" and "mate" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mané" is a noun and "mate" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mané" vs "mate" - which ranks higher?
"mate" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,048 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.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mané" and "mate".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mané" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mate" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #45,877 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mané" and "mate" 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 #45,877 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