balledvsballyWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“balled” and “bally” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#40,136
“balled” frequency rank
#40,137
“bally” frequency rank
80273
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature balled bally
Definition Having a specified kind or number of balls. Bloody (used as a mild intensifier).

Letter map: balled vs bally

Shared letters muted; letters that set balled and bally apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
balled
5 ch
bally

Spelling & dictionary notes on balled vs bally

balled and bally are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80273, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

balled is recorded at frequency rank #40,136, classified as anadj. bally is at rank #40,137, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈbæli/.

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 80273, this pair ranks #20,153 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of balled vs bally

Shared letters: abl. Private to "balled": de. Private to "bally": y.

"balled" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "bally" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • balledablled · baled · baleld · ballde · balledd · bballed · blaled
  • ballyablly · ballyy · baly · balyl · bbally · blaly

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "balled" and "bally" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "balled" vs "bally" - which ranks higher?
"balled" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,136 in our English list, against #40,137 for "bally". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "balled" and "bally".

  • Full dictionary entry for "balled" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bally" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #20,153 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "balled" and "bally" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bally vs bandy". 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 #20,153 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list