croisvscroiséeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: crois is a verb, croisée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“crois” is a verb and “croisée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#333
“crois” frequency rank
#11,556
“croisée” frequency rank
11889
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature crois croisée
Definition Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de croire. Croisement, carrefour, endroit où deux choses et spécialement deux routes se croisent.

Where the eye mixes crois and croisée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. crois runs 5 letters (CCVVC) against croisée's 7 (CCVVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
crois
7 ch
croisée

Why the eye confuses crois with croisée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: crois is \kʁwa\ while croisée is \kʁwa.ze\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “crois” sits inside “croisée”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11889, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

crois is recorded at frequency rank #333, classified as averb, pronounced \kʁwa\. croisée is at rank #11,556, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kʁwa.ze\.

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 11889, this pair ranks #407,424 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of crois vs croisée

Shared letters: ciors. Private to "crois": -. Private to "croisée": .

"crois" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC  ·  "croisée" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • croisccrois · coris · crios · croiss · crosi · crrois · rcois

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "crois" for "croisée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "crois" is a verb and "croisée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "crois" vs "croisée" - which ranks higher?
"crois" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #333 in our French list, against #11,556 for "croisée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "crois" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "croisée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #407,424 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "crois" and "croisée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "croisée vs cruiser". 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 #407,424 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