cinevscrimeConfusable pair

Which to use

“cine” and “crime” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#40,614
“cine” frequency rank
#1,362
“crime” frequency rank
41976
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cine crime
Definition cinefilm A specific act committed in violation of the law, especially criminal law.

Where the eye mixes cine and crime

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. cine runs 4 letters (CVCV) against crime's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
cine
5 ch
crime

Look-alike desk: cine vs crime

A purely visual mix-up. cine (/ˈsɪni/) and crime (/kɹaɪm/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41976, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cine is recorded at frequency rank #40,614, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɪni/. crime is at rank #1,362, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɹaɪm/.

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 41976, this pair ranks #253,429 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cine vs crime

Shared letters: cei. Private to "cine": n. Private to "crime": mr.

"cine" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "crime" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cine ← ccine · cien · cinne · cnie
  • crime ← ccrime · cirme · criem · crimme · crmie · crrime · rcime

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cine" for "crime" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈsɪni/ versus /kɹaɪm/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "cine" or "crime" show up more?
"crime" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,362 in our English list, against #40,614 for "cine". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crime" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #253,429 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cine" and "crime" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cine vs cuny". 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 #253,429 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list