IRC
\i ɛʁ se\
The verdict
“IRC” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #33,314) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #33,314
- frequency rank, French
- 3,561
- “I” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Protocole de communication textuelle instantanée utilisé sur Internet, créé en 1988 par un étudiant de l’université d’Oulu, en Finlande.
Corpus desk
Index FR-irc · IRC · French
IRC · rank #33,314 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #33,314
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,561
- PHOTO-FINISH inversés
Nearest frequency peer: inversés (-1 rank slots)
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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « IRC »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- intéressaie…
intéressaient
66,690 corpus weight
- inventées
inventées
66,689 corpus weight
- inversés
inversés
66,688 corpus weight
- IRC
IRC
66,687 corpus weight
- irrévocable
irrévocable
66,686 corpus weight
- Jagger
Jagger
66,685 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « IRC » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
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 | IRC |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \i ɛʁ se\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #33,314 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « IRC »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for IRC is neighbouring look-alikes ("it", "ix", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \i ɛʁ se\. Frequency #33,314 among 3,561 “I” headwords. Gloss: "Protocole de communication textuelle instantanée utilisé sur Internet, créé en 1988 par un étudiant de l’université d’Oulu, en Finlande.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for IRC, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "it", "ix", "iu", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is IRC, spelled I-R-C.
Definition
- 1Protocole de communication textuelle instantanée utilisé sur Internet, créé en 1988 par un étudiant de l’université d’Oulu, en Finlande.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how IRC appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Nous avons passé la soirée à discuter sur IRC.
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "IRC", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).