medovsmeinTell them apart

Quick tell: medo is a adjective, mein is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“medo” is an adjective and “mein” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#379
“medo” frequency rank
#36,545
“mein” frequency rank
36924
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medo mein
Definition que pertence ou se refere à Média meu, minha, pronome possessivo da primeira pessoa do singular:

Where the eye mixes medo and mein

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. medo (CVCV) and mein (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
medo
4 ch
mein

Look-alike desk: medo vs mein

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: medo is AFI: /'me.du/ while mein is /maɪ̯n/ ouvir^(fonte ?). Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36924, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

medo is recorded at frequency rank #379, classified as anadj, pronounced AFI: /'me.du/. mein is at rank #36,545, tagged as apron, pronounced /maɪ̯n/ ouvir^(fonte ?).

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 36924, this pair ranks #29,789 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of medo vs mein

Shared letters: em. Private to "medo": do. Private to "mein": in.

"medo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mein" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medo ← emdo · mdeo · meddo · meod · mmedo
  • mein ← emin · meinn · meni · mmein

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "medo" and "mein" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "medo" is an adjective and "mein" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "medo" or "mein" show up more?
"medo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #379 in our Portuguese list, against #36,545 for "mein". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "medo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mein" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #29,789 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medo" and "mein" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mein 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 #29,789 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