crucial
cru·cial/ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/adjective
crucial is spelled C-R-U-C-I-A-L, 2 syllables: cru·cial. The wrong spelling people search most is crutial: about 170 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 35 of all searches for the word. Crucial is an adjective meaning “Essential or decisive for determining the outcome or future of something; extremely important; vital”.
How many letters and syllables are in crucial?
| Letters | 7: C-R-U-C-I-A-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: cru·cial |
| In writing | 19 times per million words; the 4,444th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, crutial, about 170 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell crucial?
Crucial is spelled C-R-U-C-I-A-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 35 of the searches for crucial in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is crucial?
Crucial appears 19 times per million words in written English, the 4,444th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce crucial?
- /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
Crucial has 2 syllables, split cru·cial in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-crucial.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of crucial
- more crucial comparative
- most crucial superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does crucial mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Essential or decisive for determining the outcome or future of something; extremely important; vital.
The battle of Tali-Ihantala in 1944 is one of the crucial moments in the history of Finland.
- 2
archaicCruciform or cruciate; cross-shaped.
- 3
slangVery good; excellent; particularly applied to reggae music.
Delbert Wilkins is the most crucial pirate radio DJ in Brixton.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Crucial in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | crucial |
| German | entscheidend, kritisch, ausschlaggebend, wichtig, bedeutend , kreuzförmig |
| Portuguese | crucial |
| Spanish | crucial |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does crucial come from?
1706, from French crucial, a medical term for ligaments of the knee (which cross each other), from Latin crux, crucis (“cross”) (English crux), from the Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, to bend”). The meaning “decisive, critical” is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon in his influential Novum Organum (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).