Which to use
“balai” and “blain” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #15,809
- “balai” frequency rank
- #40,141
- “blain” frequency rank
- 55950
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | balai | blain |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Outil fait d’un faisceau souple, composé de fibres végétales ou synthétiques, ou d’une brosse, fixée au bout d’un long manche et destiné à nettoyer les poussières et déchets tombés au sol. | (Loire-Inférieure) Bateau plat très allongé, avec voile à livarde, qui naviguait sur les tourbières et qui pouvait porter jusqu’à 15 000 mottes de tourbe. Les plus grands avaient deux mâts. |
Where the eye mixes balai and blain
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. balai (CVCVV) and blain (CCVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Visual trap between balai and blain
A purely visual mix-up. balai (\ba.lɛ\) and blain (\blɛ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55950, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
balai is recorded at frequency rank #15,809, classified as anoun, pronounced \ba.lɛ\. blain is at rank #40,141, tagged as anoun, pronounced \blɛ̃\.
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 55950, this pair ranks #124,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of balai vs blain
Shared letters: abil. Private to "balai": -. Private to "blain": n.
"balai" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV · "blain" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "balai" and "blain" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "balai" or "blain" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "balai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "blain" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #124,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "balai" and "blain" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "begin vs blain". 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 #124,155 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.