belavsblasWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#47,185
“bela” frequency rank
#36,276
“blas” frequency rank
83461
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bela blas
Definition Voile. Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de blasen.

Letter map: bela vs blas

Shared letters muted; letters that set bela and blas apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. bela (CVCV) and blas (CCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
bela
4 ch
blas

Grammar separator: bela vs blas

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: bela is anoun and blasaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83461, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bela is recorded at frequency rank #47,185, classified as anoun. blas is at rank #36,276, tagged as averb, pronounced \blaːs\.

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 83461, this pair ranks #14,790 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bela vs blas

Shared letters: abl. Private to "bela": e. Private to "blas": s.

"bela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "blas" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bela ← bbela · beal · blea · ebla
  • blas ← bblas · blass · bllas · blsa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bela" for "blas" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "bela" is a noun and "blas" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "bela" or "blas" show up more?
"blas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,276 in our French list, against #47,185 for "bela". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "bela" vs "blas" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bela" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "blas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,790 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bela" and "blas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bela vs bold". 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 #14,790 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