Groups and collections
Synonyms for cream
Synonyms for cream: pick and skim. Every one of them is a hand audited pair from the Synonym Stack word bank, shown below in the sense it fits, in a real sentence, and beside the words that only look close.
The 2 synonyms for cream
- picknoun, in the sense "the best people or things in a group"
- skimverb, in the sense "remove from the surface"
Each of these belongs to a different sense of cream, which is why the meaning beside them changes down the list.
the best people or things in a group
The cream of England's young men were killed in the Great War.
cream in 2 more sentences, same sense
- The interview panel wanted to hire only the cream of the graduating class this year.
- Scouts from every club came to watch the cream of the local football talent play on Saturday.
How it behaves: In this sense cream almost always appears as "the cream of" followed by a group noun, a fixed construction common in formal or journalistic prose.
The true synonym
pick
Same sentence, swapped: The pick of England's young men were killed in the Great War.
Close but different
Distractors, not synonyms. This entry has no written reason line yet, so read them against the sentence and the sense above.
- ointment
- society
- few
Opposites, in this sense
dregs and worst reverse cream as it is used in the sentence above. A different sense of cream takes different opposites, which is why these sit inside the sense and not at the top of the page.
- dregs
- worst
remove from the surface
They cream the milk before bottling it.
The true synonym
skim
Same sentence, swapped: They skim the milk before bottling it.
Close but different
These three are the other tiles for this sense. Each is a real word, and none of them can stand where cream stands in the sentence above.
- bat
- lift
- wash
Where cream turns up in the game
cream is the word under test in two puzzles, spread across two difficulty tiers. It also sits on the board as one of the three wrong tiles in three other puzzles, where the answer is a different word entirely.
The puzzles where cream is the trap
- dabverb, Tier 3, Ridgeline. The answer there is swab, in the sense "apply (usually a liquid) to a surface", so cream is there to be ruled out.
- drawverb, Tier 4, High Camp. The answer there is disembowel, in the sense "remove the entrails of", and cream is one of the three tiles that lose.
- sizenoun, Tier 4, High Camp. The answer there is sizing, in the sense "any glutinous material used to fill pores in surfaces or to stiffen fabrics", with cream sitting one tile away.
Play cream
The bank on this page is the bank the game plays from, so cream reaches you as a board rather than a definition: the sentence first, four tiles, and the meaning after you choose.
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Neighbours by theme before neighbours by difficulty, because groups and collections is the company cream keeps.
One vocabulary, two jobs
cream is an answer in 2 puzzles and a wrong tile in 3. That is how the bank is built, and it is why guessing by vibe stops working around tier three.