capovscoTell them apart

Which to use

“capo” and “co” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#40,162
“capo” frequency rank
#617
“co” frequency rank
40779
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature capo co
Definition A movable bar placed across the fingerboard of a guitar and used to raise the pitch of all strings. Clipping of company.

Where the eye mixes capo and co

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
capo
2 ch
co

Why the eye confuses capo with co

A purely visual mix-up. capo (/ˈkæpəʊ/) and co (/kəʊ/) 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40779, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

capo is recorded at frequency rank #40,162, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈkæpəʊ/. co is at rank #617, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kəʊ/.

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 40779, this pair ranks #264,468 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of capo vs co

Shared letters: co. Private to "capo": ap. Private to "co": -.

"capo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "co" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • capoacpo · caop · cappo · ccapo · cpao

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "capo" for "co" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈkæpəʊ/ versus /kəʊ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "capo" or "co" show up more?
"co" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #617 in our English list, against #40,162 for "capo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "capo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "co" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #264,468 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "capo" and "co" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "capo vs caw". 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 #264,468 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list