incomevsintimeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#47,957
“income” frequency rank
#5,469
“intime” frequency rank
53426
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature income intime
Definition Rente, revenu. Profondément intérieur, en parlant surtout de ce qui fait l’essence réelle d’une chose.

Where the eye mixes income and intime

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. income and intime 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
intime

Look-alike desk: income vs intime

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: income is [ˈɪnˌkʌm] while intime is \ɛ̃.tim\. 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 53426, 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]. intime is at rank #5,469, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.tim\.

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 53426, this pair ranks #140,811 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of income vs intime

Shared letters: eimn. Private to "income": co. Private to "intime": t.

"income" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "intime" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • income ← icnome · inccome · incmoe · incoem · incomme · inncome · inocme · nicome
  • intime ← initme · inntime · intiem · intimme · intmie · inttime · itnime · nitime

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "income" and "intime" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "income" is a noun and "intime" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "income" vs "intime" - which ranks higher?
"intime" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,469 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

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "income" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "intime" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #140,811 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "income" and "intime" 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 #140,811 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