incomevsinfimeTell them apart

Quick tell: income is a noun, infime is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“income” is a noun and “infime” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,957
“income” frequency rank
#17,164
“infime” frequency rank
65121
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature income infime
Definition Rente, revenu. Qui est placé le plus bas.

Where the eye mixes income and infime

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. income and infime follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
income
6 ch
infime

Why the eye confuses income with infime

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: income is [ˈɪnˌkʌm] while infime is \ɛ̃.fim\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65121, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

income is recorded at frequency rank #47,957, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈɪnˌkʌm]. infime is at rank #17,164, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.fim\.

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 65121, this pair ranks #73,750 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of income vs infime

Shared letters: eimn. Private to "income": co. Private to "infime": f.

"income" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "infime" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • income ← icnome · inccome · incmoe · incoem · incomme · inncome · inocme · nicome
  • infime ← ifnime · inffime · infiem · infimme · infmie · inifme · innfime · nifime

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "income" and "infime" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "income" is a noun and "infime" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "income" or "infime" show up more?
"infime" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,164 in our French list, against #47,957 for "income". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "income" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "infime" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #73,750 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "income" and "infime" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "inclue vs income". 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 #73,750 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