ir vs its, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“ir” is a verb and “its” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#162
“ir” frequency rank: #11,659
“its” frequency rank: 11821
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	ir	its
Definition	mover-se de um lugar para outro	adjetivo possessivo da terceira pessoa neutra do singular, dele ou dela.

Letter map: ir vs its

Shared letters muted; letters that set ir and its apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

3 ch

its

Part-of-speech tell for ir / its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ir is averb and itsanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11821, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ir is recorded at frequency rank #162, classified as averb. its is at rank #11,659, tagged as anadj.

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 11821, this pair ranks #60,942 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ir vs its

Shared letters: i. Private to "ir": r. Private to "its": st.

"ir" · 2 letters · shape VC · "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ir" and "its" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ir" is a verb and "its" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "ir" or "its"?

"ir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #162 in our Portuguese list, against #11,659 for "its". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "ir" vs "its" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "ir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "its" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #60,942 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"ir" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ino vs its". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #60,942 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.