caivscartConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#46,045
“cai” frequency rank
#37,713
“cart” frequency rank
83758
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cai cart
Definition Bien, affaire, objet, chose, fortune. Charrette, chariot.

Where the eye mixes cai and cart

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

3 ch
cai
4 ch
cart

Why the eye confuses cai with cart

A purely visual mix-up. cai (\kaj\) and cart (\kɑɹt\) 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 83758, 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\. cart is at rank #37,713, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɑɹt\.

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 83758, this pair ranks #14,227 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cai vs cart

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cai": i. Private to "cart": rt.

"cai" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "cart" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cart ← acrt · carrt · cartt · catr · ccart · crat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cai" for "cart" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kaj\ versus \kɑɹt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cai" or "cart"?
"cart" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,713 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.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cart" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,227 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cai" and "cart" 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 #14,227 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