icevsivesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ice is a pronoun, ives is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#10,518
“ice” frequency rank
#47,977
“ives” frequency rank
58495
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ice ives
Definition Variante de iço. Pluriel de ive.

Letter map: ice vs ives

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

3 ch
ice
4 ch
ives

Part-of-speech tell for ice / ives

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ice is apronoun and ivesanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58495, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ice is recorded at frequency rank #10,518, classified as apron. ives is at rank #47,977, tagged as anoun, pronounced \iv\.

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 58495, this pair ranks #108,736 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ice vs ives

Shared letters: ei. Private to "ice": c. Private to "ives": sv.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ivesievs · ivess · ivse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ice" and "ives" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ice" is a pronoun and "ives" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ice" or "ives"?
"ice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,518 in our French list, against #47,977 for "ives". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "ice" vs "ives" 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 "ives" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #108,736 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ice" and "ives" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ime vs ives". 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 #108,736 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