Which to use
“ballast” and “balles” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #43,797
- “ballast” frequency rank
- #2,557
- “balles” frequency rank
- 46354
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ballast | balles |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Lest permettant de gérer la stabilité, l’assiette ou la gîte d’un navire. | Pluriel de balle. |
Where the eye mixes ballast and balles
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. ballast runs 7 letters (CVCCVCC) against balles's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between ballast and balles
A purely visual mix-up. ballast (\ba.last\) and balles (\bal\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46354, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ballast is recorded at frequency rank #43,797, classified as anoun, pronounced \ba.last\. balles is at rank #2,557, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bal\.
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 46354, this pair ranks #195,660 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of ballast vs balles
Shared letters: abls. Private to "ballast": t. Private to "balles": e.
"ballast" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "balles" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ballast" and "balles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "ballast" vs "balles" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "ballast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "balles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #195,660 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ballast" and "balles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ballast vs blast". 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 #195,660 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.