caravscriTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#195
“cara” frequency rank
#28,523
“cri” frequency rank
28718
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cara cri
Definition em direção a, para, contra povo indígena da América do Norte, que habitava desde as montanhas Rochosas até o oceano Atlântico, tanto nos Estados Unidos da América quanto no Canadá

Letter map: cara vs cri

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

4 ch
cara
3 ch
cri

Role in the sentence - cara and cri

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cara is apreposition and crianoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28718, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cara is recorded at frequency rank #195, classified as aprep. cri is at rank #28,523, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkɾi/.

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 28718, this pair ranks #40,081 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cara vs cri

Shared letters: cr. Private to "cara": a. Private to "cri": i.

"cara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cri" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caraacra · caar · carra · ccara · craa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cara" for "cri" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cara" is a preposition and "cri" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cara" or "cri"?
"cara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #195 in our Portuguese list, against #28,523 for "cri". 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 "cri". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cri" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,081 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cara" and "cri" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coin vs cri". 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 #40,081 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