ballot
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "ballot", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "ballot" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "ballot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
ballot is aEnglishnoun. It means: A small ball placed in a container to cast a vote; now, by extension, a piece of paper or card used for this purpose, or some other means used to signify a vote. Pronounced /ˈbælət/. It ranks #6,440 in English word frequency. Often confused with blot and balls.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ballot |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈbælət/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #6,440 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 18 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ballot is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbælət/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,440 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for ballot, with forms such as "abllot", "ballott", and "ballto". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 18 confusable-pair relationships, "blot", "balls", "bello", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Italian balota (obsolete), ballotta (“small ball, especially one used to register a vote”), from balla (“bale, bundle”) + -otta (suffix forming diminutive nouns); or from Middle French balote (obsolete), ballotte (“small ball used to register … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is ballot, spelled B-A-L-L-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A small ball placed in a container to cast a vote; now, by extension, a piece of paper or card used for this purpose, or some other means used to signify a vote.
- 2The process of voting, especially in secret; a round of voting.
- 3The total of all the votes cast in an election.
- 4A list of candidates running for office; a ticket.
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian balota (obsolete), ballotta (“small ball, especially one used to register a vote”), from balla (“bale, bundle”) + -otta (suffix forming diminutive nouns); or from Middle French balote (obsolete), ballotte (“small ball used to register a vote”) (also compare Middle French balotiage, French ballottage (“second ballot, runoff”)); both ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *ballu (“ball”), from Proto-Germanic *balluz (“ball”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: abllot,ballott,ballto,balolt,balot,bballot,blalot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for ballot
Misspelling Variants of "ballot"
Frequency rank: #6,440 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: