com vs cry, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#14
“com” frequency rank: #12,412
“cry” frequency rank: 12426
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	com	cry
Definition	indica várias relações: companhia, causa, instrumento, ligação, modo, oposição	choro

Where the eye mixes com and cry

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

com

3 ch

cry

Why the eye confuses com with cry

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: com is /kõ/ while cry is /kɹaɪ̯/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (preposition vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12426, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

com is recorded at frequency rank #14, classified as aprep, pronounced /kõ/. cry is at rank #12,412, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɹaɪ̯/.

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 12426, this pair ranks #60,168 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of com vs cry

Shared letters: c. Private to "com": mo. Private to "cry": ry.

"com" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "cry" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "com" for "cry" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "com" is a preposition and "cry" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "com" vs "cry" - which ranks higher?

"com" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14 in our Portuguese list, against #12,412 for "cry". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

Full dictionary entry for "com" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "cry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #60,168 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"com" and "cry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cham vs com". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #60,168 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.