cress
/kɹɛs/
"cress" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cress” is an uncommon English word, ranked #53,471 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #53,471
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A plant of various species, chiefly cruciferous. The leaves have a moderately pungent taste, and are used as a salad and antiscorbutic.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cress |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɹɛs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #53,471 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “cress” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cress is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɹɛs/. Corpus data places it at rank #53,471 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A plant of various species, chiefly cruciferous. The leaves have a moderately pungent taste, and are used as a salad and antiscorbutic.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for cress, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cresse, crasse, from Old English cressa, cærse (“cress”), from Proto-West Germanic *krassjō, from Proto-Germanic *krasjô (“cress”). Cognate with West Frisian kers (“cress”), Dutch kers (“cress”), German Kresse (“cress”), Danish karse (“c… The correct English form is cress, spelled C-R-E-S-S.
Definition
- 1A plant of various species, chiefly cruciferous. The leaves have a moderately pungent taste, and are used as a salad and antiscorbutic.
Etymology
From Middle English cresse, crasse, from Old English cressa, cærse (“cress”), from Proto-West Germanic *krassjō, from Proto-Germanic *krasjô (“cress”). Cognate with West Frisian kers (“cress”), Dutch kers (“cress”), German Kresse (“cress”), Danish karse (“cress”), Swedish krasse (“cress”), Icelandic krassi (“cress”).
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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “cress”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-R-E-S-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kɹɛs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.