modovsmoodWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“modo” and “mood” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#606
“modo” frequency rank
#25,401
“mood” frequency rank
26007
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature modo mood
Definition maneira, jeito humor

Where the eye mixes modo and mood

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
modo
4 ch
mood

Visual trap between modo and mood

A purely visual mix-up. modo (/ˈmɔ.du/) and mood (/mud/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (do ↔ od) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26007, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

modo is recorded at frequency rank #606, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmɔ.du/. mood is at rank #25,401, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mud/.

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 26007, this pair ranks #43,222 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of modo vs mood

Shared letters: dmo. Private to "modo": -. Private to "mood": -.

"modo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mood" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • modomdoo · mmodo · moddo · omdo
  • moodmmood · mod · moodd · omod

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "modo" and "mood" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ˈmɔ.du/ versus /mud/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "modo" or "mood" show up more?
"modo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #606 in our Portuguese list, against #25,401 for "mood". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "modo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mood" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #43,222 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "modo" and "mood" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "moído vs mood". 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 #43,222 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