cabalvscagarWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#36,355
“cabal” frequency rank
#15,037
“cagar” frequency rank
51392
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabal cagar
Definition satisfatório; completo; rigoroso; pleno expelir pelo ânus; defecar

Letter map: cabal vs cagar

Shared letters muted; letters that set cabal and cagar apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. cabal and cagar follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
cabal
5 ch
cagar

Role in the sentence - cabal and cagar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cabal is anadjective and cagaraverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51392, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabal is recorded at frequency rank #36,355, classified as anadj. cagar is at rank #15,037, tagged as averb, pronounced /kɐ'ɣaɾ/.

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 51392, this pair ranks #13,650 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cabal vs cagar

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cabal": bl. Private to "cagar": gr.

"cabal" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "cagar" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabal ← acbal · caabl · caball · cabbal · cabla · cbaal · ccabal
  • cagar ← acgar · caagr · cagarr · caggar · ccagar · cgaar

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cabal" and "cagar" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cabal" is an adjective and "cagar" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cabal" or "cagar" show up more?
"cagar" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,037 in our Portuguese list, against #36,355 for "cabal". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cagar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,650 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabal" and "cagar" 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 #13,650 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