medianovsmeninoWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#24,717
“mediano” frequency rank
#1,437
“menino” frequency rank
26154
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mediano menino
Definition que está no meio criança ou adolescente do gênero masculino

Letter map: mediano vs menino

Shared letters muted; letters that set mediano and menino apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. mediano runs 7 letters (CVCVVCV) against menino's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
mediano
6 ch
menino

Part-of-speech tell for mediano / menino

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mediano is anadjective and meninoanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26154, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mediano is recorded at frequency rank #24,717, classified as anadj, pronounced /mɨ.ˈdjɐ.nu/. menino is at rank #1,437, 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 26154, this pair ranks #43,036 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mediano vs menino

Shared letters: eimno. Private to "mediano": ad. Private to "menino": -.

"mediano" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCV  ·  "menino" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mediano ← emdiano · mdeiano · medaino · meddiano · medianno · mediaon · medinao · meidano
  • menino ← emnino · meinno · meninno · menion · mennino · mennio · mmenino · mneino

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mediano" for "menino" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mediano" is an adjective and "menino" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mediano" or "menino"?
"menino" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,437 in our Portuguese list, against #24,717 for "mediano". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "mediano" and "menino". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mediano" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "menino" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,036 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mediano" and "menino" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mediano vs meridiano". 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 #43,036 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