iconvsidoWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: icon is a noun, ido is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“icon” is a noun and “ido” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,653
“icon” frequency rank
#1,216
“ido” frequency rank
34869
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature icon ido
Definition Icono. Loco, falto de cordura.

Where the eye mixes icon and ido

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
icon
3 ch
ido

Look-alike desk: icon vs ido

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: icon is /ˈaɪ.kɒn/ while ido is [ˈið̞o]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34869, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

icon is recorded at frequency rank #33,653, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈaɪ.kɒn/. ido is at rank #1,216, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈið̞o].

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 34869, this pair ranks #189,104 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of icon vs ido

Shared letters: io. Private to "icon": cn. Private to "ido": d.

"icon" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "ido" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • iconcion · iccon · icno · iconn · iocn

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "icon" for "ido" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "icon" is a noun and "ido" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Spanish text, does "icon" or "ido" show up more?
"ido" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,216 in our Spanish list, against #33,653 for "icon". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "icon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ido" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #189,104 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "icon" and "ido" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "icon vs ilo". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #189,104 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list