crosier
/ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/
"crosier" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“crosier” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.
Corpus desk
Index EN-crosier · crosier · English
crosier · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 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 | crosier |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “crosier” in English
Rare enough to double-check
crosier is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈkɹəʊzi.ə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for crosier, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English; originally referring to the staff bearer, from a merger of Old French words crocier (“bearer of a cross”) and croisier (“one who bears or has to do with a cross”), ultimately from Latin crux (“cross”). The correct English form is crosier, spelled C-R-O-S-I-E-R.
Definition
- 1A staff with a hooked end similar to a shepherd's crook, or with a cross at the end, carried by an abbot, bishop, or archbishop as a symbol of office.
- 2A young fern frond, before it has unrolled.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how crosier appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[…]the lives of the Latin clergy were more corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword.
“Nay, most gracious sovereign,” answered the Hermit, (well known to the curious in penny-histories of Robin Hood, by the name of Friar Tuck,) “it is not the crosier I fear, but the sceptre. […]”
Etymology
From Middle English; originally referring to the staff bearer, from a merger of Old French words crocier (“bearer of a cross”) and croisier (“one who bears or has to do with a cross”), ultimately from Latin crux (“cross”).
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.