kakivskatoWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#31,574
“kaki” frequency rank
#47,407
“kato” frequency rank
78981
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature kaki kato
Definition Plaqueminier (Diospyros kaki Thunb.). Langue amérindienne de la famille athabascane parlée anciennement en Californie.

Where the eye mixes kaki and kato

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

4 ch
kaki
4 ch
kato

Look-alike desk: kaki vs kato

A purely visual mix-up. kaki (\ka.ki\) and kato (\ka.to\) 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 78981, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

kaki is recorded at frequency rank #31,574, classified as anoun, pronounced \ka.ki\. kato is at rank #47,407, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ka.to\.

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 78981, this pair ranks #24,368 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of kaki vs kato

Shared letters: ak. Private to "kaki": i. Private to "kato": ot.

"kaki" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "kato" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • kaki ← akki · kaik · kakki · kkai · kkaki
  • kato ← akto · kaot · katto · kkato · ktao

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "kaki" for "kato" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ka.ki\ versus \ka.to\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "kaki" or "kato"?
"kaki" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,574 in our French list, against #47,407 for "kato". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "kaki" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "kato" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #24,368 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "kaki" and "kato" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "kato vs kiko". 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 #24,368 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