Which to use
“balai” is a noun and “Blais” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #15,809
- “balai” frequency rank
- #31,850
- “Blais” frequency rank
- 47659
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | balai | Blais |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Nom de famille. |
Where the eye mixes balai and Blais
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses balai with Blais
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: balai is \ba.lɛ\ while Blais is \blɛ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47659, 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\. Blais is at rank #31,850, tagged as aname, pronounced \blɛ\.
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 47659, this pair ranks #185,190 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of balai vs Blais
Shared letters: abil. Private to "balai": -. Private to "Blais": s.
"balai" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV · "Blais" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "balai" for "Blais" ever safe?
Which is more common, "balai" or "Blais"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "balai" and "Blais" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "balai" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "Blais" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #185,190 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "balai" and "Blais" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Blais vs Blaye". 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 #185,190 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.