battonsvsbuttonWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: battons is a verb, button is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“battons” is a verb and “button” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,168
“battons” frequency rank
#27,353
“button” frequency rank
65521
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature battons button
Definition Première personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe battre. Butte.

Where the eye mixes battons and button

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

7 ch
battons
6 ch
button

Visual trap between battons and button

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: battons is \ba.tɔ̃\ while button is \by.tɔ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65521, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

battons is recorded at frequency rank #38,168, classified as averb, pronounced \ba.tɔ̃\. button is at rank #27,353, tagged as anoun, pronounced \by.tɔ̃\.

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 65521, this pair ranks #71,956 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of battons vs button

Shared letters: bnot. Private to "battons": as. Private to "button": u.

"battons" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "button" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • battonsabttons · batotns · battnos · battonns · battonss · battosn · bbattons · btatons
  • buttonbbutton · btuton · buton · butotn · buttno · buttonn · ubtton

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "battons" for "button" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "battons" is a verb and "button" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "battons" or "button" show up more?
"button" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,353 in our French list, against #38,168 for "battons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "battons" and "button" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "battons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "button" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #71,956 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "battons" and "button" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "battles vs battons". 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 #71,956 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