medovsmemoWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: medo is a adjective, memo is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#379
“medo” frequency rank
#35,681
“memo” frequency rank
36060
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medo memo
Definition que pertence ou se refere à Média mesmo

Letter map: medo vs memo

Shared letters muted; letters that set medo and memo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. medo and memo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
medo
4 ch
memo

Role in the sentence - medo and memo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: medo is anadjective and memoanadverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - d in “medo” becomes m in “memo”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36060, 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/. memo is at rank #35,681, tagged as anadv.

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 36060, this pair ranks #30,836 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of medo vs memo

Shared letters: emo. Private to "medo": d. Private to "memo": -.

"medo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "memo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medo ← emdo · mdeo · meddo · meod · mmedo
  • memo ← emmo · memmo · meom · mmemo · mmeo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "medo" and "memo" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "medo" is an adjective and "memo" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "medo" or "memo"?
"medo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #379 in our Portuguese list, against #35,681 for "memo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "medo" and "memo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "medo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "memo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #30,836 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medo" and "memo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "memo vs muso". 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 #30,836 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