Which to use
“icon” and “icône” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #38,845
- “icon” frequency rank
- #10,173
- “icône” frequency rank
- 49018
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | icon | icône |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Icône. | Image sainte, le plus souvent peinte sur bois, qui est vénérée dans l'Église d'Orient. |
Where the eye mixes icon and icône
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. icon runs 4 letters (VCVC) against icône's 5 (VCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: icon vs icône
A purely visual mix-up. icon (\ˈaɪ.kɒn\) and icône (\i.kon\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49018, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
icon is recorded at frequency rank #38,845, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈaɪ.kɒn\. icône is at rank #10,173, tagged as anoun, pronounced \i.kon\.
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 49018, this pair ranks #174,144 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of icon vs icône
Shared letters: cin. Private to "icon": o. Private to "icône": eô.
"icon" · 4 letters · shape VCVC · "icône" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- icon ← iccon · icno · iconn · iocn
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "icon" and "icône" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "icon" or "icône" show up more?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "icon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "icône" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #174,144 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "icon" and "icône" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "icon vs Ilona". 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 #174,144 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.