crewvscryWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: crew is a noun, cry is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#6,171
“crew” frequency rank
#21,937
“cry” frequency rank
28108
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crew cry
Definition Belegschaft weinen, heulen

Letter map: crew vs cry

Shared letters muted; letters that set crew and cry apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
crew
3 ch
cry

Part-of-speech tell for crew / cry

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: crew is anoun and cryaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28108, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

crew is recorded at frequency rank #6,171, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. cry is at rank #21,937, tagged as averb, pronounced [kɹaɪ].

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 28108, this pair ranks #1,790,406 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of crew vs cry

Shared letters: cr. Private to "crew": ew. Private to "cry": y.

"crew" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "cry" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crewccrew · cerw · creww · crrew · crwe · rcew

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "crew" for "cry" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "crew" is a noun and "cry" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "crew" vs "cry" - which ranks higher?
"crew" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,171 in our German list, against #21,937 for "cry". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "crew" and "cry". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "crew" 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 #1,790,406 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crew" and "cry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "carr vs cry". 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 #1,790,406 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list