caivscapoTell them apart

Which to use

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

#46,045
“cai” frequency rank
#38,689
“capo” frequency rank
84734
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cai capo
Definition Bien, affaire, objet, chose, fortune. Chef mafieux.

Where the eye mixes cai and capo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. cai runs 3 letters (CVV) against capo's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
cai
4 ch
capo

Look-alike desk: cai vs capo

A purely visual mix-up. cai (\kaj\) and capo (\ka.po\) 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 84734, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cai is recorded at frequency rank #46,045, classified as anoun, pronounced \kaj\. capo is at rank #38,689, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ka.po\.

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 84734, this pair ranks #12,461 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cai vs capo

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cai": i. Private to "capo": op.

"cai" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "capo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • capo ← acpo · caop · cappo · ccapo · cpao

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cai" for "capo" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kaj\ versus \ka.po\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cai" or "capo"?
"capo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,689 in our French list, against #46,045 for "cai". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "capo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #12,461 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cai" and "capo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cai vs CCE". 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 #12,461 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