bal
\bal\
The verdict
“bal” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,426) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #5,426
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Réunion, assemblée où l’on danse.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bal · bal · French
bal · rank #5,426 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,426
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH artillerie
Nearest frequency peer: artillerie (-1 rank slots)
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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « bal »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- antenne
antenne
94,578 corpus weight
- apprends
apprends
94,577 corpus weight
- artillerie
artillerie
94,576 corpus weight
- bal
bal
94,575 corpus weight
- blé
blé
94,574 corpus weight
- breton
breton
94,573 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « bal » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bal |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \bal\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,426 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « bal »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for bal is neighbouring look-alikes ("by", "be", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \bal\. Frequency #5,426 among 4,251 “B” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for bal in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "be", "BD", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct French form is bal, spelled B-A-L.
Definition
- 1Réunion, assemblée où l’on danse.
- 2Ensemble des réactions ou d’opinions qui s’enchaînent, évoquant le mouvement d’une danse.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bal appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Les bals sont des jours de bataille dans ces pays de puérile vanité, et négliger un avantage passe pour une affectation marquée.
Elles s’essaient ou s’entraînent à la scottish gasconne, en prévision des bals du week-end.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "bal", not the corpus desk frequency band.