crewvscureWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#20,685
“crew” frequency rank
#7,048
“cure” frequency rank
27733
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crew cure
Definition Groupe. Soin, souci. — En ce sens, il est surtout usité dans l’expression : n’avoir cure.

Where the eye mixes crew and cure

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

4 ch
crew
4 ch
cure

Why the eye confuses crew with cure

A purely visual mix-up. crew (\kʁu\) and cure (\kyʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27733, 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\. cure is at rank #7,048, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kyʁ\.

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 27733, this pair ranks #327,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of crew vs cure

Shared letters: cer. Private to "crew": w. Private to "cure": u.

"crew" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "cure" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • crewccrew · cerw · creww · crrew · crwe · rcew
  • cureccure · cuer · curre · ucre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "crew" for "cure" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kʁu\ versus \kyʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "crew" or "cure"?
"cure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,048 in our French list, against #20,685 for "crew". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "crew" and "cure" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "crew" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #327,128 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crew" and "cure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCE vs crew". 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 #327,128 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