cagevscasWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#5,639
“cage” frequency rank
#157
“cas” frequency rank
5796
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cage cas
Definition Petite loge portative faite de fils de fer ou de menus bâtons d’osier et dans laquelle on enferme ordinairement des petits animaux. Accident, aventure, conjoncture, occasion ; fait arrivé, ou qui peut arriver.

Where the eye mixes cage and cas

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
cage
3 ch
cas

Visual trap between cage and cas

A purely visual mix-up. cage (\kaʒ\) and cas (\kɑ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5796, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cage is recorded at frequency rank #5,639, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaʒ\. cas is at rank #157, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɑ\.

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 5796, this pair ranks #428,045 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cage vs cas

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cage": eg. Private to "cas": s.

"cage" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cas" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cageacge · caeg · cagge · ccage · cgae

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cage" for "cas" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kaʒ\ versus \kɑ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cage" or "cas"?
"cas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #157 in our French list, against #5,639 for "cage". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cage" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #428,045 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cage" and "cas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cage vs curage". 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 #428,045 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