cabovscavaWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“cabo” and “cava” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#40,649
“cabo” frequency rank
#43,330
“cava” frequency rank
83979
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabo cava
Definition Cap. Vin mousseux espagnol.

Where the eye mixes cabo and cava

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. cabo and cava follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
cabo
4 ch
cava

Look-alike desk: cabo vs cava

A purely visual mix-up. cabo (\ˈka.βo\) and cava (\ka.va\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83979, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabo is recorded at frequency rank #40,649, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈka.βo\. cava is at rank #43,330, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ka.va\.

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 83979, this pair ranks #13,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cabo vs cava

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cabo": bo. Private to "cava": v.

"cabo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cava" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabo ← acbo · cabbo · caob · cbao · ccabo
  • cava ← acva · caav · cavva · ccava · cvaa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cabo" for "cava" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ˈka.βo\ versus \ka.va\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "cabo" vs "cava" - which ranks higher?
"cabo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,649 in our French list, against #43,330 for "cava". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cava" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabo" and "cava" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cava vs COV". 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 #13,823 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list