ile
/aɪl/
"ile" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ile” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #34,534) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #34,534
- frequency rank, English
- 2,140
- “I” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Alternative form of ail (“awn”).
Corpus desk
Index EN-ile · ile · English
ile · rank #34,534 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #34,534
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,140
- PHOTO-FINISH illiteracy
Nearest frequency peer: illiteracy (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “ile”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Hyman
Hyman
65,470 corpus weight
- hyperactivi…
hyperactivity
65,469 corpus weight
- ile
ile
65,467 corpus weight
- illiteracy
illiteracy
65,466 corpus weight
- iMac
iMac
65,465 corpus weight
- incitement
incitement
65,464 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ile” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | ile |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /aɪl/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #34,534 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ile”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ile is neighbouring look-alikes ("in", "is", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /aɪl/. Frequency #34,534 among 2,140 “I” headwords. Gloss: "Alternative form of ail (“awn”).".
ile doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "in", "is", "it", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is ile, spelled I-L-E.
Definition
- 1Alternative form of ail (“awn”).
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "ile", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).