caravscausaTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#195
“cara” frequency rank
#340
“causa” frequency rank
535
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cara causa
Definition em direção a, para, contra aquilo ou aquele que ocasiona um acontecimento ou faz que uma coisa exista

Letter map: cara vs causa

Shared letters muted; letters that set cara and causa apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
cara
5 ch
causa

Part-of-speech tell for cara / causa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cara is apreposition and causaanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 535, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cara is recorded at frequency rank #195, classified as aprep. causa is at rank #340, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkaw.zɐ/.

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 535, this pair ranks #75,136 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cara vs causa

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cara": r. Private to "causa": su.

"cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "causa" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa
  • causaacusa · casua · cauas · caussa · ccausa · cuasa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cara" for "causa" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cara" is a preposition and "causa" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cara" vs "causa" - which ranks higher?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #340 for "causa". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "cara" and "causa".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "causa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #75,136 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cara" and "causa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cara vs cerda". 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 #75,136 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