crewvscrownWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“crew” and “crown” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#20,685
“crew” frequency rank
#31,429
“crown” frequency rank
52114
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crew crown
Definition Groupe. Verre spécial utilisé en optique. → voir crown-glass

Where the eye mixes crew and crown

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
crew
5 ch
crown

Why the eye confuses crew with crown

A purely visual mix-up. crew (\kʁu\) and crown (\kʁon\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52114, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

crew is recorded at frequency rank #20,685, classified as anoun, pronounced \kʁu\. crown is at rank #31,429, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁon\.

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 52114, this pair ranks #150,076 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of crew vs crown

Shared letters: crw. Private to "crew": e. Private to "crown": no.

"crew" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "crown" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crewccrew · cerw · creww · crrew · crwe · rcew
  • crownccrown · corwn · cronw · crownn · crowwn · crrown · crwon · rcown

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "crew" and "crown" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kʁu\ versus \kʁon\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "crew" or "crown"?
"crew" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,685 in our French list, against #31,429 for "crown". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "crew" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crown" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #150,076 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crew" and "crown" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "croco vs crown". 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 #150,076 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