ice
/aɪs/
"ice" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ice” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,081 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,081
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Water in frozen (solid) form.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| 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) |
Where “ice” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ice is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, 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.
ice has no tracked misspelling variants, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "in", "is", "it", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
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 … The correct English form is ice, spelled I-C-E.
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
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ice”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is I-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /aɪs/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “in” - see the side-by-side comparison. ice vs in
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.