caravscardWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“cara” and “card” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#28,125
“cara” frequency rank
#11,840
“card” frequency rank
39965
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cara card
Definition Freund Karte, auch Card

Where the eye mixes cara and card

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

4 ch
cara
4 ch
card

Why the eye confuses cara with card

A purely visual mix-up. cara ([karə]) and card ([kɑːd]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - a in “cara” becomes d in “card”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39965, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cara is recorded at frequency rank #28,125, classified as anoun, pronounced [karə]. card is at rank #11,840, tagged as anoun, pronounced [kɑːd].

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 39965, this pair ranks #1,521,882 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cara vs card

Shared letters: acr. Private to "cara": -. Private to "card": d.

"cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "card" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa
  • cardacrd · cadr · cardd · carrd · ccard · crad

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cara" and "card" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently ([karə] versus [kɑːd]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "cara" vs "card" - which ranks higher?
"card" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,840 in our German list, against #28,125 for "cara". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "card" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,521,882 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cara" and "card" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cara vs carr". 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 #1,521,882 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