comesvscomoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: comes is a verb, como is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“comes” is a verb and “como” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#32,750
“comes” frequency rank
#29,291
“como” frequency rank
62041
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature comes como
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l'indicatif présent du verbe to come. Comme.

Where the eye mixes comes and como

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
comes
4 ch
como

Why the eye confuses comes with como

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: comes is \kʌmz\ while como is \ˈko.mo\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62041, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

comes is recorded at frequency rank #32,750, classified as averb, pronounced \kʌmz\. como is at rank #29,291, tagged as anadv, pronounced \ˈko.mo\.

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 62041, this pair ranks #89,158 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of comes vs como

Shared letters: cmo. Private to "comes": es. Private to "como": -.

"comes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "como" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • comesccomes · cmoes · coems · comess · commes · comse · ocmes
  • comoccomo · cmoo · commo · coom · ocmo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "comes" and "como" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "comes" is a verb and "como" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "comes" or "como" show up more?
"como" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,291 in our French list, against #32,750 for "comes". 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 "comes" and "como" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "comes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "como" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #89,158 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "comes" and "como" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cakes vs comes". 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 #89,158 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