Which to use
“ballot” and “balls” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #33,564
- “ballot” frequency rank
- #32,699
- “balls” frequency rank
- 66263
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ballot | balls |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Petite balle de marchandises. | Pluriel de ball. |
Where the eye mixes ballot and balls
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. ballot runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against balls's 5 (CVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between ballot and balls
A purely visual mix-up. ballot (\ba.lo\) and balls (\bɔːlz\) 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 66263, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ballot is recorded at frequency rank #33,564, classified as anoun, pronounced \ba.lo\. balls is at rank #32,699, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bɔːlz\.
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 66263, this pair ranks #68,563 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of ballot vs balls
Shared letters: abl. Private to "ballot": ot. Private to "balls": s.
"ballot" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "balls" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ballot" and "balls" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "ballot" or "balls"?
What to do next
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "ballot" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "balls" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #68,563 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ballot" and "balls" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "balls vs banals". 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 #68,563 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.