camevscapTell them apart

Quick tell: came is a verb, cap is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“came” is a verb and “cap” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,428
“came” frequency rank
#10,059
“cap” frequency rank
47487
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature came cap
Definition Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs come Deckel, Haube

Letter map: came vs cap

Shared letters muted; letters that set came and cap apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
came
3 ch
cap

Grammar separator: came vs cap

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: came is averb and capanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47487, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

came is recorded at frequency rank #37,428, classified as averb, pronounced […]. cap is at rank #10,059, tagged as anoun, pronounced [kæp].

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 47487, this pair ranks #1,282,507 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of came vs cap

Shared letters: ac. Private to "came": em. Private to "cap": p.

"came" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cap" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cameacme · caem · camme · ccame · cmae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "came" and "cap" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "came" is a verb and "cap" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "came" or "cap" show up more?
"cap" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,059 in our German list, against #37,428 for "came". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "came" and "cap".

  • Full dictionary entry for "came" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cap" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,282,507 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "came" and "cap" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "came vs puzzles". 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 #1,282,507 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list