cruvscrushWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#14,555
“cru” frequency rank
#24,279
“crush” frequency rank
38834
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cru crush
Definition que não foi cozido ou não foi cozido o suficiente interesse em alguém, atração física por outra pessoa, possível ou platônica

Letter map: cru vs crush

Shared letters muted; letters that set cru and crush apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. cru runs 3 letters (CCV) against crush's 5 (CCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
cru
5 ch
crush

Role in the sentence - cru and crush

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cru is anadjective and crushanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “cru” sits inside “crush”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38834, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cru is recorded at frequency rank #14,555, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈkɾu/. crush is at rank #24,279, tagged as anoun.

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 38834, this pair ranks #27,551 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cru vs crush

Shared letters: cru. Private to "cru": -. Private to "crush": hs.

"cru" · 3 letters · shape CCV  ·  "crush" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cru" and "crush" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cru" is an adjective and "crush" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "cru" or "crush" show up more?
"cru" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,555 in our Portuguese list, against #24,279 for "crush". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "cru" and "crush". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cru" 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 #27,551 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cru" and "crush" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chau vs cru". 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 #27,551 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list