Which to use
“ballade” and “ballades” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #13,973
- “ballade” frequency rank
- #23,775
- “ballades” frequency rank
- 37748
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ballade | ballades |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Poème à forme fixe, composé de couplets faits sur les mêmes rimes avec refrain et d’un envoi. | Pluriel de ballade. |
Same sound, different letters: ballade vs ballades
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. ballade runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against ballades's 8 (CVCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Homophone desk: ballade vs ballades
This is the hard kind. ballade and ballades 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 differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “ballade” sits inside “ballades”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37748, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ballade is recorded at frequency rank #13,973, classified as anoun, pronounced \ba.lad\. ballades is at rank #23,775, 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 37748, this pair ranks #260,217 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of ballade vs ballades
Shared letters: abdel. Private to "ballade": -. Private to "ballades": s.
"ballade" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV · "ballades" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ballade" and "ballades" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "ballade" vs "ballades" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "ballade" / "ballades". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "ballade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "ballades" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #260,217 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ballade" and "ballades" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Baléares vs ballades". 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 #260,217 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.