cabalvscabrãoTell them apart

Quick tell: cabal is a adjective, cabrão is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cabal” is an adjective and “cabrão” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,355
“cabal” frequency rank
#38,163
“cabrão” frequency rank
74518
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabal cabrão
Definition satisfatório; completo; rigoroso; pleno o macho da cabra; bode

Letter map: cabal vs cabrão

Shared letters muted; letters that set cabal and cabrão apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. cabal runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against cabrão's 6 (CVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
cabal
6 ch
cabrão

Role in the sentence - cabal and cabrão

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cabal is anadjective and cabrãoanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74518, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabal is recorded at frequency rank #36,355, classified as anadj. cabrão is at rank #38,163, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɐ.ˈbɾɐ̃w̃/.

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 74518, this pair ranks #2,508 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cabal vs cabrão

Shared letters: abc. Private to "cabal": l. Private to "cabrão": orã.

"cabal" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "cabrão" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabal ← acbal · caabl · caball · cabbal · cabla · cbaal · ccabal

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cabal" and "cabrão" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cabal" is an adjective and "cabrão" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cabal" or "cabrão" show up more?
"cabal" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,355 in our Portuguese list, against #38,163 for "cabrão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "cabal" and "cabrão". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cabrão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #2,508 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabal" and "cabrão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cabal vs caudal". 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 #2,508 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list