cacovscagãoTell them apart

Quick tell: caco is a noun, cagão is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#21,952
“caco” frequency rank
#43,313
“cagão” frequency rank
65265
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature caco cagão
Definition fragmento ou pedaço quebrado de louça, barro, vidro, mármore etc cagão, que defeca com muita frequência

Letter map: caco vs cagão

Shared letters muted; letters that set caco and cagão apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. caco runs 4 letters (CVCV) against cagão's 5 (CVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
caco
5 ch
cagão

Part-of-speech tell for caco / cagão

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: caco is anoun and cagãoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65265, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

caco is recorded at frequency rank #21,952, classified as anoun. cagão is at rank #43,313, tagged as anadj, pronounced /kɐ.'gaŋ/ e /kɐ.'goŋ/.

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 65265, this pair ranks #5,457 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of caco vs cagão

Shared letters: aco. Private to "caco": -. Private to "cagão": gã.

"caco" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cagão" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caco ← acco · cacco · caoc · ccaco · ccao

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "caco" and "cagão" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "caco" is a noun and "cagão" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "caco" or "cagão" show up more?
"caco" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,952 in our Portuguese list, against #43,313 for "cagão". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "caco" and "cagão".

  • Full dictionary entry for "caco" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cagão" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,457 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "caco" and "cagão" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cagão vs ciao". 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 #5,457 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