cadevscaídoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: cade is a noun, caído is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cade” is a noun and “caído” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,173
“cade” frequency rank
#4,224
“caído” frequency rank
49397
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cade caído
Definition (Phytotoma rara) Ave de la familia Phytotomidae. Mide 19 cm. De plumaje en distintos tonos de pardo con secciones negruzcas, frente y corona pardo rojizas, pico corto y grueso de color negro e iris rojos, con dimorfismo sexual. Se alimenta de plantas y de brotes tiernos de árboles. Ave solitaria, que en algunas épocas del año forma pequeñas bandadas. Frecuenta campos, huertos y jardines. Desfallecido, amilanado.

Where the eye mixes cade and caído

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
cade
5 ch
caído

Why the eye confuses cade with caído

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cade is [ˈkað̞e] while caído is [kaˈið̞o]. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49397, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cade is recorded at frequency rank #45,173, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈkað̞e]. caído is at rank #4,224, tagged as anadj, pronounced [kaˈið̞o].

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 49397, this pair ranks #109,099 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cade vs caído

Shared letters: acd. Private to "cade": e. Private to "caído": .

"cade" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "caído" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cadeacde · cadde · caed · ccade · cdae

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cade" for "caído" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cade" is a noun and "caído" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Spanish text, does "cade" or "caído" show up more?
"caído" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,224 in our Spanish list, against #45,173 for "cade". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "cade" and "caído" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "caído" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #109,099 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cade" and "caído" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cade vs catre". 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 #109,099 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list