ice
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ice", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "ice" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "ice" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ice is aEnglishnoun. It means: Water in frozen (solid) form. Pronounced /aɪs/. It ranks #1,081 in English word frequency. Often confused with in and is.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ice |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /aɪs/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,081 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ice is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /aɪs/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,081 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ice in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "in", "is", "it", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hyse, hyys, ice, ijs, is, yce, ys, yys, from Old English īs, from Proto-West Germanic *īs, from Proto-Germanic *īsą (“ice”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyH- (“ice, frost”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian Iis, is (“ice”), Saterland … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is ice, spelled I-C-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Water in frozen (solid) form.
- 2Any frozen volatile chemical, such as ammonia or carbon dioxide.
- 3Any volatile chemical, such as water, ammonia, or carbon dioxide, not necessarily in solid form, when discussing the composition of e.g. a planet as an ice giant vs a gas giant.
- 4Something having an extreme coldness of manner.
- 5Something, such as awkwardness, that prevents open social interaction.
- 6The area where a game of ice hockey is played.
- 7Icing; frosting ("a sweet, often creamy and thick glaze made primarily of sugar").
- 8A frozen dessert made of fruit juice, water and sugar.
- 9An ice cream.
- 10An individual piece of ice.
- 11Elephant or rhinoceros ivory that has been poached and sold on the black market.
- 12An artifact that has been smuggled, especially one that is either clear or shiny.
- 13Money paid as a bribe.
- 14The crystal form of amphetamine-based drugs, including methamphetamine.
- 15One or more diamonds.
Etymology
From Middle English hyse, hyys, ice, ijs, is, yce, ys, yys, from Old English īs, from Proto-West Germanic *īs, from Proto-Germanic *īsą (“ice”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyH- (“ice, frost”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian Iis, is (“ice”), Saterland Frisian Ies (“ice”), West Frisian iis (“ice”), Alemannic German Iis, isch, éisch (“ice”), Bavarian, Cimbrian, and Mòcheno ais (“ice”), Dutch ijs (“ice”), German Eis (“ice”), German Low German Ies (“ice”), Luxembourgish Äis (“ice”), Vilamovian ajs (“ice”), Yiddish אײַז (ayz, “ice”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish is (“ice”), Elfdalian ais (“ice”), Faroese ísur (“ice”), Icelandic ís (“ice”); also Cornish yey (“ice”), yeyn (“cold”), Irish oighear (“ice”), Scottish Gaelic deigh, eigh, eighre (“ice”), Welsh iâ (“ice”), Lithuanian ýnis (“hoar frost”), Bulgarian and Russian и́ней (ínej, “hoar frost”), Czech jíní (“frost”), Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian и́ње (“hoar frost”), Ukrainian і́ній (ínij, “hoar frost, rime”), Ossetian их (ix, “ice”), Armenian եղյամ (eġyam, “frost, hoar frost, rime”), Persian یخ (yax, “ice”), Hittite 𒂊𒃷 (“ice”). Superseded non-native Middle English glace (“ice”), borrowed from Old French glace (“ice”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,081 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter I in our English index: