icevsitemWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ice is a pronoun, item is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ice” is a pronoun and “item” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,518
“ice” frequency rank
#19,048
“item” frequency rank
29566
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ice item
Definition Variante de iço. De même, également.

Letter map: ice vs item

Shared letters muted; letters that set ice and item apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ice
4 ch
item

Part-of-speech tell for ice / item

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ice is apronoun and itemanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29566, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ice is recorded at frequency rank #10,518, classified as apron. item is at rank #19,048, tagged as anadv, pronounced \i.tɛm\.

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 29566, this pair ranks #315,866 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ice vs item

Shared letters: ei. Private to "ice": c. Private to "item": mt.

"ice" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "item" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • itemietm · itemm · ittem

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ice" and "item" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ice" is a pronoun and "item" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ice" or "item" show up more?
"ice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,518 in our French list, against #19,048 for "item". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "ice" vs "item" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "item" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #315,866 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ice" and "item" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ime vs item". 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 #315,866 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list