caravscerdaTell them apart

Quick tell: cara is a preposition, cerda is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#195
“cara” frequency rank
#47,775
“cerda” frequency rank
47970
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cara cerda
Definition em direção a, para, contra que é porca, suja

Letter map: cara vs cerda

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

4 ch
cara
5 ch
cerda

Role in the sentence - cara and cerda

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cara is apreposition and cerdaanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47970, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cara is recorded at frequency rank #195, classified as aprep. cerda is at rank #47,775, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈseɾ.dɐ/.

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 47970, this pair ranks #17,254 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cara vs cerda

Shared letters: acr. Private to "cara": -. Private to "cerda": de.

"cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cerda" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa
  • cerdaccerda · cedra · cerad · cerdda · cerrda · creda · ecrda

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cara" and "cerda" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cara" is a preposition and "cerda" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cara" or "cerda"?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #47,775 for "cerda". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cerda" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #17,254 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cara" and "cerda" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cerda vs Ceres". 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 #17,254 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