English homophones

crews/cruise/Cruz

"crews" is a noun; "Cruz" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "crews" arrives as a noun, while "Cruz" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

Shared stem "cr" then splits - "crews" (5 letters) vs "cruise" (6).
Shared stem "cr" then splits - "crews" (5 letters) vs "Cruz" (4).
Shared stem "cru" then splits - "cruise" (6 letters) vs "Cruz" (4).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across crews, cruise, Cruz: cr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

crews
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory cersw · private esw
cruise
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCV
Inventory ceirsu · private eisu
Cruz
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory cruz · private uz

Pick the spelling from the meaning

Write "crews" when you mean: plural of crew
Write "cruise" when you mean: A sea or lake voyage, especially one taken for pleasure.
Write "Cruz" when you mean: A surname from Ibero-Romance.

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

crews ← ccrews · cerws · cresw · crewss · crewws · crrews
cruise ← ccruise · criuse · crruise · cruies · cruisse · crusie
Cruz ← ccruz · crruz · cruzz · crzu · curz · rcuz

Each spelling

crews

noun · /kɹuːz/ · #8,405 frequency

plural of crew

cruise

noun · /kɹuːz/ · #4,933 frequency

A sea or lake voyage, especially one taken for pleasure.

Cruz

name · /kɹuːz/ · #6,350 frequency

A surname from Ibero-Romance.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (crews, cruise, Cruz). Here's where to go from here.

"cruise" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #4,933 in English). Full entry
Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: citing · sighting · siting. Nearby cluster
Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.