caisvscaraWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: cais is a noun, cara is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cais” is a noun and “cara” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,845
“cais” frequency rank
#195
“cara” frequency rank
11040
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cais cara
Definition lugar à beira-mar, na margem do rio, nas estações de caminho-de-ferro ou do metropolitano apropriado para o embarque e desembarque de pessoas ou mercadorias em direção a, para, contra

Letter map: cais vs cara

Shared letters muted; letters that set cais and cara apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
cais
4 ch
cara

Part-of-speech tell for cais / cara

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cais is anoun and caraapreposition. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11040, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cais is recorded at frequency rank #10,845, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈkajʃ/. cara is at rank #195, tagged as aprep.

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 11040, this pair ranks #61,909 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cais vs cara

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cais": is. Private to "cara": r.

"cais" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caisacis · caiss · casi · ccais · cias
  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cais" and "cara" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cais" is a noun and "cara" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cais" or "cara"?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #10,845 for "cais". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "cais" and "cara". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cais" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #61,909 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cais" and "cara" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cais vs coin". 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 #61,909 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