medicinavsmedicineConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#1,854
“medicina” frequency rank
#21,513
“medicine” frequency rank
23367
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medicina medicine
Definition ciência que tem como objetivo a conservação e o restabelecimento da saúde, que pretende curar e prevenir as doenças dos seres humanos; técnica de tratar e combater doenças medicina

Where the eye mixes medicina and medicine

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. medicina and medicine follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
medicina
8 ch
medicine

Look-alike desk: medicina vs medicine

A purely visual mix-up. medicina (/me.dʒi.ˈsi.nə/) and medicine (/ˈmɛ.də.sɪn/, /ˈmɛ.ɾə.sɪn/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - a in “medicina” becomes e in “medicine”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23367, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

medicina is recorded at frequency rank #1,854, classified as anoun, pronounced /me.dʒi.ˈsi.nə/. medicine is at rank #21,513, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmɛ.də.sɪn/, /ˈmɛ.ɾə.sɪn/.

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 23367, this pair ranks #46,465 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of medicina vs medicine

Shared letters: cdeimn. Private to "medicina": a. Private to "medicine": -.

"medicina" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVCV  ·  "medicine" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medicina ← emdicina · mdeicina · medciina · meddicina · mediccina · medician · medicinna · medicnia
  • medicine ← emdicine · mdeicine · medciine · meddicine · mediccine · medicien · medicinne · medicnie

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "medicina" for "medicine" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/me.dʒi.ˈsi.nə/ versus /ˈmɛ.də.sɪn/, /ˈmɛ.ɾə.sɪn/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "medicina" or "medicine"?
"medicina" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,854 in our Portuguese list, against #21,513 for "medicine". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "medicina" and "medicine" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "medicina" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "medicine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #46,465 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medicina" and "medicine" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mediana vs medicina". 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 #46,465 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