IRA
/aɪ ɑɹ eɪ/
"ira" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“IRA” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #9,057) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #9,057
- frequency rank, English
- 2,140
- “I” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of individual retirement account.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ira · IRA · English
IRA · rank #9,057 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #9,057
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,140
- PHOTO-FINISH instructed
Nearest frequency peer: instructed (-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 “IRA”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- hut
hut
90,947 corpus weight
- instructed
instructed
90,945 corpus weight
- IRA
IRA
90,944 corpus weight
- Jenkins
Jenkins
90,943 corpus weight
- Johns
Johns
90,942 corpus weight
- knives
knives
90,941 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “IRA” 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 | IRA |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /aɪ ɑɹ eɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #9,057 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “IRA”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for IRA is neighbouring look-alikes ("is", "it", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /aɪ ɑɹ eɪ/. Frequency #9,057 among 2,140 “I” headwords. Gloss: "Initialism of individual retirement account.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for IRA, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "is", "it", "IV", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is IRA, spelled I-R-A.
Definition
- 1Initialism of individual retirement account.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how IRA appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Since you fund a nondeductible IRA with already-taxed dollars, you might figure you wouldn't pay any income taxes on the conversion. But you wouldn't just owe tax on the funds you're converting; you'd also have to take the pretax contributions and gains in all your non-Roth IRAs into account.
These were the liquefiable assets at hand: a drawerful of family jewelry, a 401(k), an IRA, and a one-bedroom condo purchased with inheritance money after her parents' passing.
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 "IRA", not the corpus desk frequency band.