Word.ws English Dictionary

crew

UK/kɹuː/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/kɹʉw/

crew noun: any company of people; an assemblage; a throng. Also the simple past of crow.

crew: any company of people; an assemblage; a throng
Image: NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

crew (plural crews)

  1. (obsolete) Any company of people; an assemblage; a throng.
    • There a noble crew / Of Lordes and Ladies stood on every side.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 7
    • Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew?1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  2. A group of people (often staff) manning and operating a large facility or piece of equipment such as a factory, ship, boat, airplane, or spacecraft.
    • If you need help, please contact a member of the crew.
    • He saw now clearly that the sole crew of the vessel was these two dead men, and though he could not see their faces, he saw by their outstretched hands, which were all of ragged flesh, that they had been subjected to some strange exceptional process of decay.1905, H. G. Wells, The Empire of the Ants
  3. A group of people working together on a task.
    • The crews competed to cut the most timber.
    Synonyms:
    team, gang
  4. The group of workers on a dramatic production who are not part of the cast.
    • There are a lot of carpenters in the crew!
    • The crews for different movies would all come down to the bar at night.
  5. (derogatory, informal, often) A close group of friends.
    • I’d look out for that whole crew down at Jack’s.
  6. (derogatory, often) A set of individuals lumped together by the speaker.
    • He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
      And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
      They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
      But his soul is marching on.1861 William Weston Patton, (version of) John Brown's Body
    • Malignant principles bear fruit in kind and the Revolution did no more than practice what men had been taught by the abandoned crew of philosophers.1950, Bernard Nicholas Schilling, Conservative England and the Case Against Voltaire, page 266
    Synonyms:
    crowd, flock, lot, gang
  7. (scouting) A group of Rovers.
  8. (slang) A hip-hop or b-boying group.
    • And Jay cuts the records every day of the week / And we are the crew that can never be meek1985, “King of Rock”, performed by Run-DMC
    • The most popular and critically acclaimed rap and deejay “crews”—Run-D.M.C., Whodini, L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys, the Fat Boys, Public Enemy, Full Force, Salt & Pepa, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, Mantronix, U.T.F.O., et al.—were spawned on that city's streets.1988 February 7, Carly Darling, “L.A.—The Second Deffest City of Hip-Hop”, in Los Angeles Times
    Synonyms:
    posse, band, group
  9. A rowing team manning a single shell.
    • If a crew feather much under water, it is a good plan to seat them in a row on a bench, and give each man a stick to handle as an oar.1888, W.B. Woodgate, Boating, page 71
  10. (plural) A member of the crew of a vessel or plant.
    • One crew died in the accident.
  11. (plural) A worker on a dramatic production who is not part of the cast.
    • There were three actors and six crew on the set.
  12. (plural) A member of a ship's company who is not an officer.
    • The officers and crew assembled on the deck.
    • There are quarters for three officers and five crew.
    Synonyms:
    crewer
  13. (US, uncountable) The sport of competitive rowing.
    • The University of Virginia belongs to the Atlantic Coast Conference and competes interscholastically in basketball, baseball, crew, cross country, fencing, football, golf, indoor track, lacrosse, polo, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, and wrestling.1973, University of Virginia Undergraduate Record
    • Two Andover classmates, Al Wilson and Al Lindley, both went out for crew in our freshman year at Yale.1989, Benjamin Spock, Mary Morgan, Spock on Spock, →ISBN, page 71

Verb

crew (third-person singular simple present crews, present participle crewing, simple past and past participle crewed)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To be a member of a vessel's crew.
    • We crewed together on a fishing boat last year.
    • The ship was crewed by fifty sailors.
  2. (transitive) To be a member of a work or production crew.
    • The film was crewed and directed by students.
  3. (transitive) To supply workers or sailors for a crew.
    • The seafood companies crewed huge trawlers with new fishermen, many of whom were fish-plant workers, since much of the work on board a modern trawler is fish processing.1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 182
    • Steele crewed the boat with men from his own regiment and volunteers from John Wood's detachment.2003, Kirk C. Jenkins, The Battle Rages Higher, →ISBN, page 42
  4. To do the proper work of a sailor.
    • The crewing of the vessel before the crash was deficient.
  5. To take on, recruit (new) crew.
    • The two ships will be crewing in the latter half of September.1967 January, “Tampa”, in The Pilot, page 30

Noun (2)

crew (plural crews)

  1. (East-Midlands, Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) A pen for livestock such as chickens or pigs
    • Between the shippon and the pig-crew, with the wind blowing over from the vegetable ground.2004, Gillian Cross, On the Edge, →ISBN, page 7

Noun (3)

crew (plural crews)

  1. (dated, dialectal) The Manx shearwater.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Crew

Crew

  1. A habitational surname from Welsh.
  2. A male given name transferred from the surname.
  3. A townland in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
  4. A townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Noun (4) capitalized: CREW

CREW (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, library science) Acronym of continuous review, evaluation, and weeding.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: CREW

CREW

  1. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
    • “Defendants’ representations to this Court that Mr. Musk is not running DOGE are tantamount to legal gaslighting,” CREW said.2025 March 30, Tierney Sneed, “Is DOGE actually an agency? The answer could have major ramifications”, in CNN

Also used as

crew is also the simple past of crow.

crew is also the simple past and past participle of cry.

crew meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Punjabi

crew in Hindi

group of people operating a large facility or piece of equipment
कर्मीदल karmīdal

crew in Marathi

चालक दल, चालक दलाला

crew in Bengali

ক্রু, নাবিকদল

crew in Punjabi

ਚਾਲਕ ਦਲ
More languagesFewer languages
crew in Gujarati
ક્રૂ
crew in Odia
କ୍ରୁ
crew in Nepali
चालक दल, चालकदल, चालक दललाई
crew in Arabic
طَاقَم ṭāqam, طَاقِم ṭāqim
crew in Persian
گُروه goruh
crew in Thai
บุคลากร bùk-ká-laa-gɔɔn, ลูกเรือ lûuk-rʉʉa
crew in Vietnamese
đội, đoàn, nhóm, ê-kíp

Examples of crew in a sentence

  • Glasgow crews bring the 35-year-old Class 156 north, then wait to take over the next train back south.2023 November 29, Paul Clifton, “West is best in the Highlands”, in RAIL, number 997, pages 37-38:
  • We decided we needed another rapper in the crew and spent months looking.2003, Jennifer Guglielmo, Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White?, →ISBN, page 150:
  • In b-boying culture, a group of b-boys or b-girls who dance and battle together are referred to as a crew.2016, Sophy Smith, Hip-Hop Turntablism, Creativity and Collaboration, Routledge, →ISBN, page 10:
  • On 3 Feb 1982 at Podmoscovnoe in the USSR, a Mil Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopter (NATO code-name "Halo"), crewed by G.V.1994, Peter Matthews (editor), The Guinness Book Of Records, 1994, page 340:

All 40 example sentences with crew

Synonyms of crew

11 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of crew

Forms of crew

Noun
pluralcrews
Verb
third-person singular presentcrews
present participlecrewing
past participlecrewed
pastcrewed

Past tense of crew: crewed

Plural of crew: crews

Origin of crew

From Middle English crue, from Old French creue (“an increase, recruit, military reinforcement”), the feminine past participle of creistre (“grow”), from Latin crescere (“to arise, grow”).

Probably of Brythonic/Cumbric origin. Compare Middle Welsh creu (“pigsty, hovel, stockade”).

From Crewe in Cheshire, Old Welsh criu (“weir”).

Words formed from crew

Phrases with crew

9 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with crew

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crew

What does crew mean?
Crew means any company of people; an assemblage; a throng.
What is crew in Hindi?
Crew in Hindi is कर्मीदल (karmīdal). See Crew meaning in Hindi.
How do you use crew in a sentence?
Glasgow crews bring the 35-year-old Class 156 north, then wait to take over the next train back south.
What part of speech is crew?
Crew can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce crew?
Crew is pronounced /kɹuː/ (UK).
What is the plural of crew?
The plural of crew is crews.

Words near crew in the dictionary

  1. crevis
  2. crevises
  3. Creviston
  4. Crevistons
  5. crevyssh
  6. crew
  7. crew cab
  8. crew cabs
  9. crew chief
  10. crew chiefs
  11. crew cut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crew (page history and authors); Crew (page history and authors); CREW (page history and authors); crew (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crew (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crew (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crew (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crew (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crew (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-crew.ogg.

Cite this entry: “crew.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crew. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.