medovsmenuWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#379
“medo” frequency rank
#12,288
“menu” frequency rank
12667
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medo menu
Definition que pertence ou se refere à Média cardápio

Where the eye mixes medo and menu

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
medo
4 ch
menu

Visual trap between medo and menu

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: medo is AFI: /'me.du/ while menu is /mɨ.ˈnu/. 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 noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12667, 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/. menu is at rank #12,288, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mɨ.ˈnu/.

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 12667, this pair ranks #59,854 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of medo vs menu

Shared letters: em. Private to "medo": do. Private to "menu": nu.

"medo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "menu" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medoemdo · mdeo · meddo · meod · mmedo
  • menuemnu · mennu · meun · mmenu · mneu

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "medo" and "menu" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "medo" is an adjective and "menu" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "medo" or "menu" show up more?
"medo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #379 in our Portuguese list, against #12,288 for "menu". 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 "medo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "menu" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,854 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medo" and "menu" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mens vs menu". 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 #59,854 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