cabovscânonWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,092
“cabo” frequency rank
#45,275
“cânon” frequency rank
46367
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cabo cânon
Definition patente militar abaixo do sargento e acima do soldado vide cânone

Letter map: cabo vs cânon

Shared letters muted; letters that set cabo and cânon apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. cabo runs 4 letters (CVCV) against cânon's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
cabo
5 ch
cânon

Pair insight - cabo / cânon

cabo and cânon 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46367, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cabo is recorded at frequency rank #1,092, classified as anoun. cânon is at rank #45,275, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkɐ.non/.

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 46367, this pair ranks #18,945 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cabo vs cânon

Shared letters: co. Private to "cabo": ab. Private to "cânon": nâ.

"cabo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cânon" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cabo ← acbo · cabbo · caob · cbao · ccabo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cabo" and "cânon" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 1 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 "cânon" - which ranks higher?
"cabo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,092 in our Portuguese list, against #45,275 for "cânon". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "cabo" and "cânon". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cabo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cânon" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,945 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cabo" and "cânon" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "canja vs cânon". 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 #18,945 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