medidavsmeditarWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: medida is a noun, meditar is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“medida” is a noun and “meditar” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,014
“medida” frequency rank
#24,385
“meditar” frequency rank
25399
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medida meditar
Definition determinada grandeza que serve de padrão para avaliar outra pensar sobre

Where the eye mixes medida and meditar

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. medida runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against meditar's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
medida
7 ch
meditar

Why the eye confuses medida with meditar

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: medida is /mɨ.ˈdi.dɐ/ while meditar is /mɨ.di.ˈtaɾ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25399, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

medida is recorded at frequency rank #1,014, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɨ.ˈdi.dɐ/. meditar is at rank #24,385, tagged as averb, pronounced /mɨ.di.ˈtaɾ/.

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 25399, this pair ranks #43,933 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of medida vs meditar

Shared letters: adeim. Private to "medida": -. Private to "meditar": rt.

"medida" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "meditar" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medidaemdida · mdeida · meddia · meddida · mediad · medidda · meidda · mmedida
  • meditaremditar · mdeitar · medditar · mediatr · meditarr · meditra · medittar · medtiar

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "medida" and "meditar" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "medida" is a noun and "meditar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "medida" or "meditar" show up more?
"medida" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,014 in our Portuguese list, against #24,385 for "meditar". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "medida" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meditar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,933 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medida" and "meditar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meditar vs mendigar". 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 #43,933 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