Which to use
“balades” and “ballade” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #18,941
- “balades” frequency rank
- #13,973
- “ballade” frequency rank
- 32914
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | balades | ballade |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pluriel de balade. | Poème à forme fixe, composé de couplets faits sur les mêmes rimes avec refrain et d’un envoi. |
Same sound, different letters: balades vs ballade
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. balades (CVCVCVC) and ballade (CVCCVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Ear matches; page differs - balades and ballade
This is the hard kind. balades and ballade are pronounced identically (\ba.lad\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32914, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
balades is recorded at frequency rank #18,941, classified as anoun, pronounced \ba.lad\. ballade is at rank #13,973, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ba.lad\.
Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.
With a confusion score of 32914, this pair ranks #294,125 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of balades vs ballade
Shared letters: abdel. Private to "balades": s. Private to "ballade": -.
"balades" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC · "ballade" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "balades" for "ballade" ever safe?
Frequency check: "balades" vs "ballade" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
"balades" and "ballade" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "balades" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "ballade" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #294,125 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "balades" and "ballade" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "balades vs balayée". Nearby pair
- Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes
Confusion rank #294,125 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.