ballade
"ballade" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ballade” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Any of various genres of single-movement musical pieces having lyrical and narrative elements.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ballade · ballade · English
ballade · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ballade |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “ballade” in English
Rare enough to double-check
ballade is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for ballade in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from French ballade. Doublet of ballad. The correct English form is ballade, spelled B-A-L-L-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1Any of various genres of single-movement musical pieces having lyrical and narrative elements.
- 2A poem of one or more triplets of seven- or eight-line stanzas, each ending with the same line as refrain, and usually an envoi; more generally, any poem in stanzas of equal length.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ballade appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.
"Dead and gone!" as Andrew Lang re-echoes in a sweetly mournful ballade[…
Etymology
Borrowed from French ballade. Doublet of ballad.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.