habidosvshábilesConfusable pair

Quick tell: habidos is a participle, hábiles is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“habidos” is a participle and “hábiles” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,162
“habidos” frequency rank
#11,983
“hábiles” frequency rank
50145
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature habidos hábiles
Definition Forma del plural de habido, participio de haber. Forma del plural de hábil.

Where the eye mixes habidos and hábiles

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

7 ch
habidos
7 ch
hábiles

Look-alike desk: habidos vs hábiles

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: habidos is [aˈβ̞ið̞os] while hábiles is [ˈaβ̞iles]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (participle vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50145, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

habidos is recorded at frequency rank #38,162, classified as aparticiple, pronounced [aˈβ̞ið̞os]. hábiles is at rank #11,983, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈaβ̞iles].

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 50145, this pair ranks #104,842 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of habidos vs hábiles

Shared letters: bhis. Private to "habidos": ado. Private to "hábiles": elá.

"habidos" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "hábiles" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • habidos ← ahbidos · habbidos · habdios · habiddos · habidoss · habidso · habiods · haibdos

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "habidos" for "hábiles" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "habidos" is a participle and "hábiles" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Spanish text, does "habidos" or "hábiles" show up more?
"hábiles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,983 in our Spanish list, against #38,162 for "habidos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "habidos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hábiles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #104,842 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "habidos" and "hábiles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ávidos vs habidos". 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 #104,842 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