creusévscrushWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: creusé is a adjective, crush is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“creusé” is an adjective and “crush” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,749
“creusé” frequency rank
#24,169
“crush” frequency rank
35918
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature creusé crush
Definition (En parlant du visage ou de parties du visage) Empreint de creux, émacié. Attirance ; désir ; pulsion

Where the eye mixes creusé and crush

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. creusé runs 6 letters (CCVVCV) against crush's 5 (CCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
creusé
5 ch
crush

Look-alike desk: creusé vs crush

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: creusé is \kʁø.ze\ while crush is \kʁœʃ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35918, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

creusé is recorded at frequency rank #11,749, classified as anadj, pronounced \kʁø.ze\. crush is at rank #24,169, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁœʃ\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 35918, this pair ranks #273,261 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of creusé vs crush

Shared letters: crsu. Private to "creusé": eé. Private to "crush": h.

"creusé" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV  ·  "crush" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crush ← ccrush · crrush · crsuh · cruhs · crushh · crussh · cursh · rcush

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "creusé" and "crush" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "creusé" is an adjective and "crush" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "creusé" vs "crush" - which ranks higher?
"creusé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,749 in our French list, against #24,169 for "crush". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "creusé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crush" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #273,261 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "creusé" and "crush" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "crest vs crush". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #273,261 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list