Which to use
“crawl” is a verb and “cray” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,026
- “crawl” frequency rank
- #28,500
- “cray” frequency rank
- 38526
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | crawl | cray |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground. | A crayfish or lobster. |
Where the eye mixes crawl and cray
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: crawl vs cray
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: crawl is /kɹɔːl/ while cray is /kɹæɪ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38526, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
crawl is recorded at frequency rank #10,026, classified as averb, pronounced /kɹɔːl/. cray is at rank #28,500, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɹæɪ/.
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 38526, this pair ranks #285,135 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of crawl vs cray
Shared letters: acr. Private to "crawl": lw. Private to "cray": y.
"crawl" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC · "cray" · 4 letters · shape CCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "crawl" and "cray" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "crawl" or "cray"?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "crawl" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cray" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #285,135 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "crawl" and "cray" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cray vs Croat". 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 #285,135 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.