Which to use
“balled” is an adjective and “bolted” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #40,136
- “balled” frequency rank
- #20,857
- “bolted” frequency rank
- 60993
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | balled | bolted |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Having a specified kind or number of balls. | simple past and past participle of bolt |
Letter map: balled vs bolted
Shared letters muted; letters that set balled and bolted apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.
Part-of-speech tell for balled / bolted
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: balled is anadjective and boltedaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60993, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
balled is recorded at frequency rank #40,136, classified as anadj. bolted is at rank #20,857, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈbəʊltɪd/.
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 60993, this pair ranks #96,953 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of balled vs bolted
Shared letters: bdel. Private to "balled": a. Private to "bolted": ot.
"balled" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "bolted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "balled" for "bolted" ever safe?
Frequency check: "balled" vs "bolted" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "balled" and "bolted".
- Full dictionary entry for "balled" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "bolted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #96,953 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "balled" and "bolted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "balled vs buller". 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 #96,953 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.