CreevscrewTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#28,161
“Cree” frequency rank
#2,033
“crew” frequency rank
30194
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Cree crew
Definition An aboriginal nation of North America. A group of people together

Where the eye mixes Cree and crew

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
Cree
4 ch
crew

Look-alike desk: Cree vs crew

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Cree is /kɹiː/ while crew is /kɹuː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - e in “Cree” becomes w in “crew”, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30194, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Cree is recorded at frequency rank #28,161, classified as aname, pronounced /kɹiː/. crew is at rank #2,033, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɹuː/.

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 30194, this pair ranks #356,621 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Cree vs crew

Shared letters: cer. Private to "Cree": -. Private to "crew": w.

"Cree" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "crew" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Creeccree · cere · cre · crree · rcee
  • crewccrew · cerw · creww · crrew · crwe · rcew

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Cree" for "crew" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Cree" is a name and "crew" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Cree" or "crew" show up more?
"crew" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,033 in our English list, against #28,161 for "Cree". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "Cree" and "crew" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Cree" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crew" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #356,621 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Cree" and "crew" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Cree vs crewed". 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 #356,621 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