maniavsmeninaConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#10,393
“mania” frequency rank
#1,015
“menina” frequency rank
11408
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mania menina
Definition espécie de loucura com tendências para a excitação criança do gênero feminino

Letter map: mania vs menina

Shared letters muted; letters that set mania and menina apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. mania runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against menina's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
mania
6 ch
menina

Corpus notes: mania and menina

mania and menina 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11408, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mania is recorded at frequency rank #10,393, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɐ.ˈni.ɐ/. menina is at rank #1,015, tagged as anoun.

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 11408, this pair ranks #61,445 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mania vs menina

Shared letters: aimn. Private to "mania": -. Private to "menina": e.

"mania" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "menina" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mania ← amnia · maina · manai · mannia · mmania · mnaia
  • menina ← emnina · meinna · menian · meninna · mennia · mennina · mmenina · mneina

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mania" for "menina" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, 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 "mania" or "menina" show up more?
"menina" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,015 in our Portuguese list, against #10,393 for "mania". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "mania" vs "menina" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mania" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "menina" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #61,445 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mania" and "menina" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs mania". 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 #61,445 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