mastervsmisterWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#6,446
“master” frequency rank
#15,861
“mister” frequency rank
22307
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature master mister
Definition principal se diz de algo de grande importância, de suma importância

Letter map: master vs mister

Shared letters muted; letters that set master and mister apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch
master
6 ch
mister

Part-of-speech tell for master / mister

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: master is anadjective and misteranoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “master” becomes i in “mister”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22307, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

master is recorded at frequency rank #6,446, classified as anadj. mister is at rank #15,861, tagged as anoun, pronounced /miʃ.ˈtɛɾ/.

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 22307, this pair ranks #47,777 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of master vs mister

Shared letters: emrst. Private to "master": a. Private to "mister": i.

"master" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "mister" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • masteramster · masetr · masster · masterr · mastre · mastter · matser · mmaster
  • misterimster · misetr · misster · misterr · mistre · mistter · mitser · mmister

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "master" and "mister" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "master" is an adjective and "mister" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "master" or "mister" show up more?
"master" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,446 in our Portuguese list, against #15,861 for "mister". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "master" and "mister".

  • Full dictionary entry for "master" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mister" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #47,777 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "master" and "mister" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Minister vs mister". 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 #47,777 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