IRDvsivreWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: IRD is a name, ivre is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“IRD” is a name and “ivre” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,611
“IRD” frequency rank
#9,682
“ivre” frequency rank
58293
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature IRD ivre
Definition Établissement public à caractère scientifique et technologique (EPST) français, sous la tutelle des ministères chargés de la Recherche et de la Coopération, remplaçant l’Office de la recherche scientifique et technique outre-mer (ORSTOM). Qui a le cerveau troublé par l’effet des boissons fermentées, par l’alcool, etc.

Letter map: IRD vs ivre

Shared letters muted; letters that set IRD and ivre apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. IRD runs 3 letters (VCC) against ivre's 4 (VCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
IRD
4 ch
ivre

Part-of-speech tell for IRD / ivre

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: IRD is aname and ivreanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58293, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

IRD is recorded at frequency rank #48,611, classified as aname. ivre is at rank #9,682, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ivʁ\.

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 58293, this pair ranks #109,907 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of IRD vs ivre

Shared letters: ir. Private to "IRD": d. Private to "ivre": ev.

"IRD" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "ivre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ivre ← iver · ivrre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "IRD" for "ivre" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "IRD" is a name and "ivre" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "IRD" or "ivre" show up more?
"ivre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,682 in our French list, against #48,611 for "IRD". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "IRD" vs "ivre" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "IRD" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ivre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #109,907 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "IRD" and "ivre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IRD vs isi". 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 #109,907 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