close vs crosse, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#431
“close” frequency rank: #33,192
“crosse” frequency rank: 33623
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	close	crosse
Definition	To remove or block an opening, gap or passage through.	A lacrosse stick.

Letter map: close vs crosse

Shared letters muted; letters that set close and crosse apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch

6 ch

crosse

Part-of-speech tell for close / crosse

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: close is averb and crosseanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33623, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

close is recorded at frequency rank #431, classified as averb, pronounced /kləʊz/. crosse is at rank #33,192, tagged as anoun.

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 33623, this pair ranks #327,829 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of close vs crosse

Shared letters: ceos. Private to "close": l. Private to "crosse": r.

"close" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV · "crosse" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

close ← cclose · cllose · cloes · closse · clsoe · colse · lcose
crosse ← ccrosse · corsse · crose · crrosse · crsose · rcosse

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "close" and "crosse" be used interchangeably?

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

Which is more common, "close" or "crosse"?

"close" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #431 in our English list, against #33,192 for "crosse". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "close" vs "crosse" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "close" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "crosse" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #327,829 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"close" and "crosse" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "crone vs crosse". 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 #327,829 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.