cabovscabrãoTell them apart

Which to use

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

#1,092
“cabo” frequency rank
#38,163
“cabrão” frequency rank
39255
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabo cabrão
Definition patente militar abaixo do sargento e acima do soldado o macho da cabra; bode

Letter map: cabo vs cabrão

Shared letters muted; letters that set cabo and cabrão apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch
cabo
6 ch
cabrão

Corpus notes: cabo and cabrão

cabo and cabrão 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 differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39255, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabo is recorded at frequency rank #1,092, classified as anoun. 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 39255, this pair ranks #27,047 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cabo vs cabrão

Shared letters: abco. Private to "cabo": -. Private to "cabrão": .

"cabo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cabrão" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caboacbo · cabbo · caob · cbao · ccabo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cabo" for "cabrão" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "cabo" vs "cabrão" - which ranks higher?
"cabo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,092 in our Portuguese list, against #38,163 for "cabrão". 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 "cabo" and "cabrão".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabo" 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 #27,047 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabo" and "cabrão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cabrão vs caução". 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 #27,047 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