caresvsCarewWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: cares is a verb, Carew is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cares” is a verb and “Carew” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#3,606
“cares” frequency rank
#45,255
“Carew” frequency rank
48861
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cares Carew
Definition third-person singular simple present indicative of care A village and community in Pembrokeshire, Wales (OS grid ref SN045038).

Where the eye mixes cares and Carew

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. cares and Carew follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
cares
5 ch
Carew

Visual trap between cares and Carew

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cares is /kɛɹz/ while Carew is /ˈkɛəɹuː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - s in “cares” becomes w in “Carew”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48861, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cares is recorded at frequency rank #3,606, classified as averb, pronounced /kɛɹz/. Carew is at rank #45,255, tagged as aname, pronounced /ˈkɛəɹuː/.

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 48861, this pair ranks #189,090 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cares vs Carew

Shared letters: acer. Private to "cares": s. Private to "Carew": w.

"cares" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "Carew" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cares ← caers · carres · carse · ccares · craes
  • Carew ← acrew · caerw · careww · carrew · carwe · ccarew · craew

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cares" for "Carew" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cares" is a verb and "Carew" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cares" vs "Carew" - which ranks higher?
"cares" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,606 in our English list, against #45,255 for "Carew". 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 "cares" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Carew" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #189,090 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cares" and "Carew" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Carew 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 #189,090 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