castvscoatWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“cast” and “coat” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#17,723
“cast” frequency rank
#40,949
“coat” frequency rank
58672
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cast coat
Definition arremesso casaco

Where the eye mixes cast and coat

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
cast
4 ch
coat

Visual trap between cast and coat

A purely visual mix-up. cast (/kæst/) and coat (/koʊt/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58672, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cast is recorded at frequency rank #17,723, classified as anoun, pronounced /kæst/. coat is at rank #40,949, tagged as anoun, pronounced /koʊt/.

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 58672, this pair ranks #8,609 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cast vs coat

Shared letters: act. Private to "cast": s. Private to "coat": o.

"cast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "coat" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • castacst · casst · castt · ccast · csat
  • coatcaot · ccoat · coatt · ocat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cast" for "coat" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/kæst/ versus /koʊt/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cast" or "coat"?
"cast" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,723 in our Portuguese list, against #40,949 for "coat". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "cast" and "coat" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coat" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #8,609 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cast" and "coat" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chau vs coat". 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 #8,609 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