manévsmayoTell them apart

Which to use

“mané” and “mayo” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#16,814
“mané” frequency rank
#30,251
“mayo” frequency rank
47065
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mané mayo
Definition pessoa boba, tolo maio

Letter map: mané vs mayo

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

4 ch
mané
4 ch
mayo

Spelling & dictionary notes on mané vs mayo

mané and mayo are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47065, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mané is recorded at frequency rank #16,814, classified as anoun. mayo is at rank #30,251, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈma.ʝo/.

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 47065, this pair ranks #18,212 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mané vs mayo

Shared letters: am. Private to "mané": né. Private to "mayo": oy.

"mané" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mayo" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mayo ← amyo · maoy · mayyo · mmayo · myao

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mané" for "mayo" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "mané" or "mayo" show up more?
"mané" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,814 in our Portuguese list, against #30,251 for "mayo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "mané" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mayo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,212 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mané" and "mayo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mayo". 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 #18,212 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