ici
\i.si\
The verdict
“ici” is in the everyday core of French, ranked #153 in French word frequency and used as an adverb.
- #153
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Il marque la proximité immédiate dans l’espace par rapport à soi.
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 | ici |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| IPA | \i.si\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #153 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ici” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for ici is 3 letters long, classified as an adverb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \i.si\. Corpus data places it at rank #153 in overall French word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for ici, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "il", "ii", "it", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is ici, spelled I-C-I.
Definition
- 1Il marque la proximité immédiate dans l’espace par rapport à soi.
- 2Dans ce pays-ci, dans cette ville-ci, etc., par opposition à un autre pays, à une autre ville, désignés quelquefois par l’adverbe là-bas.
- 3(là … ici) Il marque la différence des lieux, sans rapport de distance. Dans ce cas, il est corrélatif de l’adverbe là.
- 4(ici … là) Il marque une simple opposition entre deux actions faites à des moments différents.
- 5Il marque un point de départ dans le temps, dans un discours, dans une narration, dans un livre, etc.
- 6Il marque le moment présent.
- 7Il indique lors de la traduction d’un mot étranger que celle-ci est valable uniquement dans ce contexte.
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 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ici”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is I-C-I - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \i.si\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “il” - see the side-by-side comparison. ici vs il
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French 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.