ihn vs IR, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ihn” is a pronoun and “IR” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#140
“ihn” frequency rank: #14,329
“IR” frequency rank: 14469
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ihn	IR
Definition	Personalpronomen 3. Person Maskulinum Singular Akkusativ	infrarot, Infrarot

Letter map: ihn vs IR

Shared letters muted; letters that set ihn and IR apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ihn

2 ch

Role in the sentence - ihn and IR

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ihn is apronoun and IRanabbrev. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14469, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ihn is recorded at frequency rank #140, classified as apron, pronounced [iːn]. IR is at rank #14,329, tagged as anabbrev.

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 14469, this pair ranks #1,951,000 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ihn vs IR

Shared letters: i. Private to "ihn": hn. Private to "IR": r.

"ihn" · 3 letters · shape VCC · "IR" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ihn" and "IR" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

In ordinary German text, does "ihn" or "IR" show up more?

"ihn" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #140 in our German list, against #14,329 for "IR". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "ihn" vs "IR" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ihn" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "IR" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,951,000 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ihn" and "IR" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IMs vs IR". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,951,000 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.