ballot

1. 1.

   a document listing the alternatives that is used in voting

   Broaderdocument

   Narrowerabsentee ballot
2. 2.

   a choice that is made by counting the number of people in favor of each alternative

   “there were only 17 votes in favor of the motion”

   “they allowed just one vote per person”

   Synonymsvotevotingballoting

   Broaderchoice

   Narrowerblock votesecret ballotsplit ticketstraight ticketmultiple votingcasting votevetowrite-in

1. 1.

   vote by ballot

   “The voters were balloting in this state”

   Broadervote

Other forms of ballot

plural

ballots·

past tense

ballotted·

present participle

ballotting·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ballot

What does ballot mean?

ballot means "a document listing the alternatives that is used in voting". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ballot?

ballot has 2 syllables: bal-lot. The stress falls on "bal". In IPA it is /ˈbælət/.

What is another word for ballot?

Close synonyms include vote, voting, balloting. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ballot a common word?

ballot is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.