cayo
"cayo" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cayo” is uncommon English (frequency #88,187 among 43,570 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #88,187
- frequency rank, English
- 43,570
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A small island or ledge of rock in the water; a key.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cayo |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #88,187 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cayo” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
cayo is uncommon English at frequency #88,187 among 43,570 “C” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A small island or ledge of rock in the water; a key.".
Zero misspellings are on record for cayo in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Spanish cayo, from Taíno cayo (“small island”). Doublet of key. The correct English form is cayo, spelled C-A-Y-O.
Definition
- 1A small island or ledge of rock in the water; a key.
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish cayo, from Taíno cayo (“small island”). Doublet of key.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “cayo”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-A-Y-O - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.