cream of the crop
"cream-of-the-crop" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cream of the crop” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 17
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The best or most desirable among some selection.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cream-of-the-crop · cream of the crop · English
cream of the crop · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 17 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cream of the crop |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 17 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “cream of the crop” in English
Rare enough to double-check
cream of the crop is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The best or most desirable among some selection.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for cream of the crop, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is cream of the crop, spelled C-R-E-A-M- -O-F- -T-H-E- -C-R-O-P.
Definition
- 1The best or most desirable among some selection.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how cream of the crop appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
They hoped to hire only the cream of the crop for the new project team.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.