IOC vs its, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“IOC” is a name and “its” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#21,248
“IOC” frequency rank: #75
“its” frequency rank: 21323
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	IOC	its
Definition	Initialism of International Olympic Committee.	Belonging to it.

Letter map: IOC vs its

Shared letters muted; letters that set IOC and its apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

IOC

3 ch

its

Role in the sentence - IOC and its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: IOC is aname and itsadeterminer. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21323, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

IOC is recorded at frequency rank #21,248, classified as aname. its is at rank #75, tagged as adet, pronounced /ɪts/.

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 21323, this pair ranks #424,732 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of IOC vs its

Shared letters: i. Private to "IOC": co. Private to "its": st.

"IOC" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "IOC" for "its" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "IOC" is a name and "its" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary English text, does "IOC" or "its" show up more?

"its" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #75 in our English list, against #21,248 for "IOC". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "IOC" vs "its" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "IOC" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "its" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #424,732 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"IOC" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IOC vs ith". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #424,732 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.