caravscoxaTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#195
“cara” frequency rank
#12,410
“coxa” frequency rank
12605
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cara coxa
Definition em direção a, para, contra parte da perna, desde as virilhas até o joelho

Letter map: cara vs coxa

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

4 ch
cara
4 ch
coxa

Role in the sentence - cara and coxa

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cara is apreposition and coxaanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12605, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cara is recorded at frequency rank #195, classified as aprep. coxa is at rank #12,410, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈko.ʃɐ/.

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 12605, this pair ranks #59,928 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cara vs coxa

Shared letters: ac. Private to "cara": r. Private to "coxa": ox.

"cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "coxa" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa
  • coxaccoxa · coax · coxxa · cxoa · ocxa

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cara" and "coxa" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cara" is a preposition and "coxa" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cara" vs "coxa" - which ranks higher?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #12,410 for "coxa". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "cara" vs "coxa" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coxa" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,928 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cara" and "coxa" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "conca vs coxa". 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 #59,928 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