menvsmêsTell them apart

Quick tell: men is a pronoun, mês is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“men” is a pronoun and “mês” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#6,318
“men” frequency rank
#444
“mês” frequency rank
6762
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature men mês
Definition pronome indefinido da terceira pessoa do singular, equivalente à partícula "se" cada uma das doze partes em que se divide o ano

Letter map: men vs mês

Shared letters muted; letters that set men and mês apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
men
3 ch
mês

Part-of-speech tell for men / mês

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: men is apronoun and mêsanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6762, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

men is recorded at frequency rank #6,318, classified as apron. mês is at rank #444, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmeʃ/.

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 6762, this pair ranks #67,586 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of men vs mês

Shared letters: m. Private to "men": en. Private to "mês": .

"men" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "mês" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "men" and "mês" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "men" is a pronoun and "mês" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "men" vs "mês" - which ranks higher?
"mês" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #444 in our Portuguese list, against #6,318 for "men". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "men" vs "mês" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "men" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mês" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #67,586 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "men" and "mês" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maa vs men". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #67,586 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