bathvsbattentWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: bath is a adjective, battent is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“bath” is an adjective and “battent” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,486
“bath” frequency rank
#6,589
“battent” frequency rank
37075
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bath battent
Definition Super ; bon ; agréable. Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe battre.

Same sound, different letters: bath vs battent

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.

4 ch
bath
7 ch
battent

Same sound, different spelling - bath / battent

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: bath and battent carry the same recorded pronunciation, \bat\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37075, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bath is recorded at frequency rank #30,486, classified as anadj, pronounced \bat\. battent is at rank #6,589, tagged as averb, pronounced \bat\.

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 37075, this pair ranks #265,068 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of bath vs battent

Shared letters: abt. Private to "bath": h. Private to "battent": en.

"bath" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "battent" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bathabth · baht · bathh · batth · bbath · btah
  • battentabttent · batent · batetnt · battennt · battentt · battetn · battnet · bbattent

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bath" for "battent" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "bath" is an adjective and "battent" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "bath" or "battent" show up more?
"battent" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,589 in our French list, against #30,486 for "bath". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've separated the homophone pair "bath" / "battent". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bath" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "battent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #265,068 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bath" and "battent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bafa vs bath". 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 #265,068 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list