castvscosWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: cast is a noun, cos is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cast” is a noun and “cos” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,723
“cast” frequency rank
#27,810
“cos” frequency rank
45533
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cast cos
Definition arremesso qualquer coisa

Letter map: cast vs cos

Shared letters muted; letters that set cast and cos apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
cast
3 ch
cos

Part-of-speech tell for cast / cos

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cast is anoun and cosapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45533, 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/. cos is at rank #27,810, tagged as apron.

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 45533, this pair ranks #19,851 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cast vs cos

Shared letters: cs. Private to "cast": at. Private to "cos": o.

"cast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "cos" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • castacst · casst · castt · ccast · csat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cast" for "cos" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cast" is a noun and "cos" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cast" or "cos"?
"cast" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,723 in our Portuguese list, against #27,810 for "cos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "cast" vs "cos" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,851 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cast" and "cos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coin vs cos". 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 #19,851 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