ick vs ii, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ick” is a pronoun and “ii” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,183
“ick” frequency rank: #520
“ii” frequency rank: 16703
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ick	ii
Definition	unbetontes „ich“	Nominativ Plural Maskulinum des Pronomens is

Letter map: ick vs ii

Shared letters muted; letters that set ick and ii apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ick

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for ick / ii

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ick is apronoun and iianunknown. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16703, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ick is recorded at frequency rank #16,183, classified as apron, pronounced [ɪk]. ii is at rank #520, tagged as anunknown, pronounced […].

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 16703, this pair ranks #1,933,675 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ick vs ii

Shared letters: i. Private to "ick": ck. Private to "ii": -.

"ick" · 3 letters · shape VCC · "ii" · 2 letters · shape VV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ick" and "ii" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ick" is a pronoun and "ii" an unknown, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "ick" or "ii"?

"ii" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #520 in our German list, against #16,183 for "ick". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ick" and "ii".

Full dictionary entry for "ick" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ii" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,933,675 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ick" and "ii" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ick vs IMs". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,933,675 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.