masvsmeansTell them apart

Quick tell: mas is a conjunction, means is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mas” is a conjunction and “means” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25
“mas” frequency rank
#30,253
“means” frequency rank
30278
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mas means
Definition conjunção adversativa, indica clara oposição entre ideias meios, meio

Letter map: mas vs means

Shared letters muted; letters that set mas and means apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
mas
5 ch
means

Role in the sentence - mas and means

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mas is aconjunction and meansanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30278, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mas is recorded at frequency rank #25, classified as aconj, pronounced /ˈmɐʃ/. means is at rank #30,253, 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 30278, this pair ranks #38,126 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mas vs means

Shared letters: ams. Private to "mas": -. Private to "means": en.

"mas" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "means" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meansemans · maens · meanns · meanss · measn · menas · mmeans

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mas" and "means" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mas" is a conjunction and "means" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mas" vs "means" - which ranks higher?
"mas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25 in our Portuguese list, against #30,253 for "means". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mas" and "means".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "means" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #38,126 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mas" and "means" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "means vs mens". 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 #38,126 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