ICO vs is, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ICO” is a noun and “is” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#23,564
“ICO” frequency rank: #8
“is” frequency rank: 23572
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ICO	is
Definition	Initialism of initial coin offering.	third-person singular simple present indicative of be

Letter map: ICO vs is

Shared letters muted; letters that set ICO and is apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

ICO

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for ICO / is

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ICO is anoun and isaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23572, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ICO is recorded at frequency rank #23,564, classified as anoun. is is at rank #8, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɪz/.

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 23572, this pair ranks #408,319 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ICO vs is

Shared letters: i. Private to "ICO": co. Private to "is": s.

"ICO" · 3 letters · shape VCV · "is" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ICO" for "is" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ICO" is a noun and "is" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "ICO" or "is"?

"is" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8 in our English list, against #23,564 for "ICO". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ICO" and "is".

Full dictionary entry for "ICO" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "is" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #408,319 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ICO" and "is" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ICO vs ith". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #408,319 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.