ballade

\ba.lad\

/\ba.lad\/ noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“ballade” has 7 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #13,973. The variants make it a useful spelling check.

#13,973
frequency rank, French
4,251
“B” headwords
7
tracked misspellings
12
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Poème à forme fixe, composé de couplets faits sur les mêmes rimes avec refrain et d’un envoi.

Corpus desk

Index FR-ballade · ballade · French

ballade · rank #13,973 · 7 variants · 12 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #13,973
  • LEN-LONG 7 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-MID 12 pairs
  • VAR-MID 7 variants
  • BOOK-MID 4,251
  • PHOTO-FINISH baisers

Nearest frequency peer: baisers (-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.

Pairs de rang près de l'aimant d'erreurs « ballade »

Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin

corpus weight

What this shows « ballade » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

ballade vs balle
71% similar
ballade vs blade
71% similar
ballade vs Barbade
57% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for ballade
PropertyValue
Headwordballade
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\ba.lad\
Letters7
Frequency rank#13,973
Misspellings tracked7
Confusable pairs12
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « ballade »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).balladese place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « baisers » (#13,972), « barack » (#13,974), « Aubry » (#13,971). Parmi 4,251 lemmes en « B », « ballade » est au #13,973. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

A misspelling magnet

The generator records 7 spelling variants around ballade (IPA \ba.lad\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #13,973 among 4,251 “B” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.

Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for ballade, with forms such as "abllade", "balalde", and "balladde". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 12 confusable-pair relationships, "balle", "blade", "Barbade", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is ballade, spelled B-A-L-L-A-D-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    Poème à forme fixe, composé de couplets faits sur les mêmes rimes avec refrain et d’un envoi.
  2. 2
    Récit en vers, divisé en strophes avec ou sans refrain, reproduisant le plus souvent des traditions historiques ou légendaires.
  3. 3
    Nom donné à des compositions musicales et à des chansons, bien qu’elles ne retiennent que rarement la forme fixe d’origine.
  4. 4
    Morceau de jazz, généralement de 32 mesures, joué sur tempo lent, voire très lent.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how ballade appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. […] il était à peine remis de cette émotion, lorsque, d’une voix douce et à la fois profonde, la jeune fille commença une ballade dont les paroles avaient, avec la situation où il se trouvait, une telle analogie, qu’on eût pu croire que la mystérieuse virtuose improvisait.
  2. Je vais — hop ! — à l’improvisade, vous composer une ballade.

This word in other languages

ballade(English)balada(Español)Ballade(Deutsch)

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as:

  • abllade
  • balalde
  • balladde
  • ballaed
  • balldae
  • bballade
  • blalade

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ballade - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.

abllade2balalde2balladde1ballaed2balldae2bballade1blalade2
Edit distance from "ballade"

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

How do you spell "ballade"?
"ballade" is spelled B-A-L-L-A-D-E. The IPA pronunciation is \ba.lad\.
What does "ballade" mean?
As a noun, "ballade" means: Poème à forme fixe, composé de couplets faits sur les mêmes rimes avec refrain et d’un envoi.
What words are commonly confused with "ballade"?
"ballade" is commonly confused with "balle", "blade", "Barbade". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "ballade"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "ballade" is \ba.lad\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "ballade" come from?
"ballade" is a French word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "ballade", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

baisers#13,972bascule#13,975assurez#13,970cadence#13,986

Similar misspelling depth

Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (7 here; floor ≥5).

Aubry7 variantsBrice7 variantsancre7 variantscouille7 variants

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list