caosvscaraWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#4,128
“caos” frequency rank
#195
“cara” frequency rank
4323
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature caos cara
Definition espaço limitado e amorfo que precedeu à criação do cosmo em direção a, para, contra

Letter map: caos vs cara

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

4 ch
caos
4 ch
cara

Part-of-speech tell for caos / cara

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: caos 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 4323, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

caos is recorded at frequency rank #4,128, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈkaws/. 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 4323, this pair ranks #70,622 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of caos vs cara

Shared letters: ac. Private to "caos": os. Private to "cara": r.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caosacos · caoss · ccaos · coas
  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "caos" for "cara" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "caos" is a noun and "cara" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "caos" vs "cara" - which ranks higher?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #4,128 for "caos". 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 "caos" and "cara". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "caos" 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 #70,622 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "caos" and "cara" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "caos 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 #70,622 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