marcadovsmercadoWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: marcado is a adjective, mercado is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#2,487
“marcado” frequency rank
#759
“mercado” frequency rank
3246
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marcado mercado
Definition assinalado com marca local ou evento público onde mercadorias são negociadas

Where the eye mixes marcado and mercado

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. marcado and mercado follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
marcado
7 ch
mercado

Visual trap between marcado and mercado

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marcado is /mɐɾ.ˈka.du/ while mercado is /meɹ.ˈka.du/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - a in “marcado” becomes e in “mercado”, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3246, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marcado is recorded at frequency rank #2,487, classified as anadj, pronounced /mɐɾ.ˈka.du/. mercado is at rank #759, tagged as anoun, pronounced /meɹ.ˈka.du/.

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 3246, this pair ranks #71,930 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of marcado vs mercado

Shared letters: acdmor. Private to "marcado": -. Private to "mercado": e.

"marcado" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "mercado" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marcado ← amrcado · macrado · maracdo · marcaddo · marcaod · marccado · marcdao · marrcado
  • mercado ← emrcado · mecrado · meracdo · mercaddo · mercaod · merccado · mercdao · merrcado

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "marcado" and "mercado" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marcado" is an adjective and "mercado" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "marcado" or "mercado" show up more?
"mercado" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #759 in our Portuguese list, against #2,487 for "marcado". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marcado" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mercado" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #71,930 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marcado" and "mercado" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "melado vs mercado". 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 #71,930 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