ball
Meanings
noun
- A solid or hollow sphere, or roughly spherical mass.
- A quantity of string, thread, etc., wound into a spherical shape.
- Homologue or analogue of a disk in the Euclidean plane.
- In 3-dimensional Euclidean space, the volume bounded by a sphere.
- The set of points in a metric space of any number of dimensions lying within a given distance (the radius) of a given point.
- The set of points in a topological space lying within some open set containing a given point.
- A solid, spherical nonexplosive missile for a cannon, rifle, gun, etc.
- A jacketed non-expanding bullet, typically of military origin.
- Such bullets collectively.
- A roundish, protuberant portion of some part of the body.
- The front of the bottom of the foot, just behind the toes.
- The globe; the earthly sphere.
verb
- To form or wind into a ball.
- To heat in a furnace and form into balls for rolling.
- To have sexual intercourse (with).
- To gather balls which cling to the feet or skis, as of damp snow or clay; to gather into balls.
- To be hip or cool.
- To reject from a fraternity or sorority. (Ellipsis of blackball).
- To play basketball.
- To spend money extravagantly.
- To punish by affixing a ball and chain.
- Of bees: to kill (a wasp) by surrounding it in large numbers so as to raise its body heat.
- To operate (a vehicle) at high speed (whether balls-out, balls to the wall, or ballin' the jack, each of which comes ultimately from ball via a different route).
intj
- An exclamation to inform players on an adjacent playing area that a loose ball from another game has entered their playing area; typically implies that play should be paused until the ball has been retrieved.
- An appeal by the crowd for holding the ball against a tackled player.
noun
- A formal dance.
- A very enjoyable time.
- A competitive event among young African-American and Latin American LGBTQ+ people in which prizes are awarded for drag and similar performances. See ball culture.
name
- An English surname.
- A town in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States.
- A hamlet in Egloshayle parish, on the eastern outskirts of Wadebridge, Cornwall, England (OS grid ref SX0073).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-der. Proto-Germanic *balluz Old English *beall Middle English bal English ball From Middle English bal, ball, balle, from an unattested Old English *beall, *bealla (“round object, ball”) or Old Norse bǫllr (“a ball”), both from Proto-Germanic *balluz, *ballô (“ball”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰol-n- (“ball, bubble”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to blow, inflate, swell”). Cognate with Old Saxon ball, Dutch bal, Old High German bal, ballo (German Ball (“ball”); Ballen (“bale”)). Related forms in Romance are borrowings from Germanic. See also balloon, bale.
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
Translations
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This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.