com vs cru, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“com” is a preposition and “cru” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14
“com” frequency rank: #14,555
“cru” frequency rank: 14569
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	com	cru
Definition	indica várias relações: companhia, causa, instrumento, ligação, modo, oposição	que não foi cozido ou não foi cozido o suficiente

Where the eye mixes com and cru

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

com

3 ch

cru

Visual trap between com and cru

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: com is /kõ/ while cru is /ˈkɾu/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (preposition vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14569, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

com is recorded at frequency rank #14, classified as aprep, pronounced /kõ/. cru is at rank #14,555, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈkɾu/.

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 14569, this pair ranks #57,476 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of com vs cru

Shared letters: c. Private to "com": mo. Private to "cru": ru.

"com" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "cru" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "com" for "cru" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "com" is a preposition and "cru" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "com" or "cru"?

"com" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14 in our Portuguese list, against #14,555 for "cru". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

Full dictionary entry for "com" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "cru" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #57,476 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"com" and "cru" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chau vs cru". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #57,476 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.