ballast
\ba.last\
The verdict
“ballast” has 9 generated spelling variants in the French index at frequency #43,797. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #43,797
- frequency rank, French
- 4,251
- “B” headwords
- 9
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Lest permettant de gérer la stabilité, l’assiette ou la gîte d’un navire.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ballast · ballast · French
ballast · rank #43,797 · 9 variants · 7 confusables
- FREQ-MID #43,797
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 7 pairs
- VAR-MID 9 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,251
- PHOTO-FINISH baratin
Nearest frequency peer: baratin (+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 « ballast »
Même bande de rareté: utile si une faute tombe sur un lemme voisin
- autoproclamé
autoproclamé
56,208 corpus weight
- Bahn
Bahn
56,206 corpus weight
- ballast
ballast
56,204 corpus weight
- baratin
baratin
56,203 corpus weight
- Barrois
Barrois
56,202 corpus weight
- basset
basset
56,201 corpus weight
What this shows « ballast » siège parmi ces pairs FrequencyWords; la profondeur des fautes est suivie à part dans le graphique d'édition.
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 | ballast |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \ba.last\ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #43,797 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Fréquence de l'aimant d'erreurs « ballast »
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 9 spelling variants around ballast (IPA \ba.last\), anoun. Corpus frequency is #43,797 among 4,251 “B” headwords. Wiktionary lists 4 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 9 likely wrong-spelling variants for ballast, with forms such as "abllast", "balalst", and "balast". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "balls", "blast", "balles", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, 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 ballast, spelled B-A-L-L-A-S-T.
Definition
- 1Lest permettant de gérer la stabilité, l’assiette ou la gîte d’un navire.
- 2Réservoir d’un sous-marin contenant de l’air ou de l’eau pour régler son immersion.
- 3Remblai de gravier que l’on tasse sur les voies ferrées pour assujettir les traverses.
- 4Composant électrique utilisé pour réduire le courant électrique dans un circuit électrique.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ballast appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
On les voyait glisser sans jamais perdre contact avec le sol, semblables à de vieux navires enfoncés profondément dans l'océan des choses terrestres, y prenant appui et ballast.
La seule faculté que possède l’ordinateur à un degré surhumain, c’est la mémoire. Or l’accumulation du passé est dans certaines limites un atout important, mais c’est aussi un fardeau, un ballast dont très sagement la nature se débarrasse à chaque génération nouvelle – puisque le savoir des parents ne se transmet pas héréditairement aux enfants.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- abllast
- balalst
- balast
- ballasst
- ballastt
- ballats
- ballsat
- bballast
- blalast
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ballast - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 "ballast", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (9 here; floor ≥5).