Which to use
“card” is a noun and “cares” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #964
- “card” frequency rank
- #3,606
- “cares” frequency rank
- 4570
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | card | cares |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A playing card. | third-person singular simple present indicative of care |
Where the eye mixes card and cares
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: card is /kɑːd/ while cares is /kɛɹz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4570, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
card is recorded at frequency rank #964, classified as anoun, pronounced /kɑːd/. cares is at rank #3,606, tagged as averb, pronounced /kɛɹz/.
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 4570, this pair ranks #518,467 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of card vs cares
Shared letters: acr. Private to "card": d. Private to "cares": es.
"card" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "cares" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC