Cali
[ˈkali]
The verdict
“Cali” is a regularly-used Spanish word, ranked #7,395 in Spanish word frequency and used as a proper noun.
- #7,395
- frequency rank, Spanish
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Ciudad capital del departamento del Valle, al suroccidente de Colombia, y una de las más populosas del país. Coordenadas: 03°27′″N 76°32′″O. Su nombre de fundación es Santiago de Cali.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Cali |
| Language | Spanish |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | [ˈkali] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #7,395 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Cali” sits in Spanish frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Spanish entry for Cali is 4 letters long, classified as a proper noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ˈkali]. Corpus data places it at rank #7,395 in overall Spanish word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Ciudad capital del departamento del Valle, al suroccidente de Colombia, y una de las más populosas del país. Coordenadas: 03°27′″N 76°32′″O. Su nombre de fundación es Santiago de Cali.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for Cali, with forms such as "acli", "cail", and "calli". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "can", "cap", "col", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct Spanish form is Cali, spelled C-A-L-I.
Definition
- 1Ciudad capital del departamento del Valle, al suroccidente de Colombia, y una de las más populosas del país. Coordenadas: 03°27′″N 76°32′″O. Su nombre de fundación es Santiago de Cali.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: acli,cail,calli,ccali,clai
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of Cali - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 Spanish corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "Cali"?
What does "Cali" mean?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “Cali”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Spanish spelling is C-A-L-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˈkali] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “can” - see the side-by-side comparison. Cali vs can
- Browse more Spanish words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Spanish words
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.