crush
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "crush", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "crush" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "crush" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
crush is aEnglishnoun. It means: A violent collision or compression; a crash; destruction; ruin. Pronounced /kɹʌʃ/. It ranks #5,409 in English word frequency. Often confused with Cruz and crux.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | crush |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kɹʌʃ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,409 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for crush is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɹʌʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,409 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for crush, with forms such as "ccrush", "crrush", and "crsuh". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Cruz", "crux", "cusp", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English cruschen (“to crush, smash, squeeze, squash”), from Old French croissir (“to crush”), from Late Latin *crusciō (“to crush”), from Frankish *krustijan (“to crush, squeeze, squash”), from Proto-Germanic *kreustaną (“to crush, grind, strike… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is crush, spelled C-R-U-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A violent collision or compression; a crash; destruction; ruin.
- 2Violent pressure, as of a moving crowd.
- 3A violent crowding.
- 4A crowd that produces uncomfortable pressure.
- 5A group or gang.
- 6A crowd control barrier.
- 7A drink made by squeezing the juice out of fruit.
- 8An infatuation with somebody one is not dating.
- 9An infatuation with somebody one is not dating.
- 10A standing stock or cage with movable sides used to restrain livestock for safe handling.
- 11A party or festive function.
- 12The process of crushing cane to remove the raw sugar, or the season when this process takes place.
- 13The situation where certain colors are so similar as to be hard to distinguish, either as a deliberate effect or as a limitation of a display.
- 14A paraphilia involving arousal from seeing things destroyed by crushing.
Etymology
From Middle English cruschen (“to crush, smash, squeeze, squash”), from Old French croissir (“to crush”), from Late Latin *crusciō (“to crush”), from Frankish *krustijan (“to crush, squeeze, squash”), from Proto-Germanic *kreustaną (“to crush, grind, strike, smash”). Cognate with Middle Low German tôkrosten (“to crush, shatter”), Swedish krysta (“to squeeze”), Danish kryste (“to squash”), Icelandic kreista (“to squeeze, squash”), Faroese kroysta (“to squeeze”), Gothic 𐌺𐍂𐌹𐌿𐍃𐍄𐌰𐌽 (kriustan, “to gnash”). Akin also to Middle Dutch crosen (“to bruise, crush”), Middle Low German krossen, krö̂sen, tôkrö̂sen (“to break, shatter”), Old Swedish krusa (“to crush”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccrush,crrush,crsuh,cruhs,crushh,crussh,cursh,rcush
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for crush
Misspelling Variants of "crush"
Frequency rank: #5,409 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: