cabelovsCibeleTell them apart

Which to use

“cabelo” and “Cibele” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#930
“cabelo” frequency rank
#49,353
“Cibele” frequency rank
50283
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabelo Cibele
Definition pelos que crescem na cabeça do ser humano na mitologia greco-romana, filha do Céu e da Terra e mulher de Saturno

Letter map: cabelo vs Cibele

Shared letters muted; letters that set cabelo and Cibele apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. cabelo and Cibele follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
cabelo
6 ch
Cibele

Spelling & dictionary notes on cabelo vs Cibele

cabelo and Cibele are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50283, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabelo is recorded at frequency rank #930, classified as anoun, pronounced /kɐ.ˈbe.lu/. Cibele is at rank #49,353, tagged as anoun.

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 50283, this pair ranks #14,693 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cabelo vs Cibele

Shared letters: bcel. Private to "cabelo": ao. Private to "Cibele": i.

"cabelo" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "Cibele" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabelo ← acbelo · cabbelo · cabello · cabeol · cableo · caeblo · cbaelo · ccabelo
  • Cibele ← cbiele · ccibele · cibbele · cibeel · cibelle · ciblee · cieble · icbele

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cabelo" and "Cibele" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cabelo" or "Cibele" show up more?
"cabelo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #930 in our Portuguese list, against #49,353 for "Cibele". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "cabelo" and "Cibele".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabelo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Cibele" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,693 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabelo" and "Cibele" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Cibele vs cível". 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 #14,693 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