diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.4.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.4.rst
index d438c5705f2df..70054d4bb5467 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.4.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.4.rst
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ Fixed regressions
 - Fixed regression in :meth:`DatetimeIndex.intersection` when the :class:`DatetimeIndex` has dates crossing daylight savings time (:issue:`46702`)
 - Fixed regression in :func:`merge` throwing an error when passing a :class:`Series` with a multi-level name (:issue:`47946`)
 - Fixed regression in :meth:`DataFrame.eval` creating a copy when updating inplace (:issue:`47449`)
+- Fixed regression where ``AttributeError`` may be raised when using ``pd.NA`` with ``object`` dtype (:issue:`47101`)
 - Fixed regression where getting a row using :meth:`DataFrame.iloc` with :class:`SparseDtype` would raise (:issue:`46406`)
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/pandas/core/missing.py b/pandas/core/missing.py
index 6005e11efbac4..7c24de47a9515 100644
--- a/pandas/core/missing.py
+++ b/pandas/core/missing.py
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
     Any,
     cast,
 )
+import warnings
 
 import numpy as np
 
@@ -92,8 +93,11 @@ def mask_missing(arr: ArrayLike, values_to_mask) -> npt.NDArray[np.bool_]:
             # GH#29553 prevent numpy deprecation warnings
             pass
         else:
-            new_mask = arr == x
-            if not isinstance(new_mask, np.ndarray):
+            # GH#47101 we may get a scalar new_mask if elementwise comparison fails
+            with warnings.catch_warnings():
+                warnings.simplefilter("ignore", FutureWarning)
+                new_mask = arr == x
+            if not isinstance(new_mask, (np.ndarray, bool)):
                 # usually BooleanArray
                 new_mask = new_mask.to_numpy(dtype=bool, na_value=False)
             mask |= new_mask
diff --git a/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_replace.py b/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_replace.py
index 177f3ec1b4504..bd451e6c0ce1a 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_replace.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_replace.py
@@ -1496,6 +1496,13 @@ def test_replace_list_with_mixed_type(
         result = obj.replace(box(to_replace), value)
         tm.assert_equal(result, expected)
 
+    def test_replace_object_dtype_with_pandas_na(self):
+        # GH#47101
+        df = DataFrame({"d": [pd.NA]})
+        with tm.assert_produces_warning(None):
+            result = df.replace("", pd.NA)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, df)
+
 
 class TestDataFrameReplaceRegex:
     @pytest.mark.parametrize(