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Balls

[bawl]

Example Sentences Origin

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noun

a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.

a round or roundish body, of various sizes and materials, either hollow or solid, for use in games, as baseball, football, tennis, or golf.

a game played with a ball, especially baseball: The boys are out playing ball.

Baseball. a pitched ball, not swung at by the batter, that does not pass over home plate between the batter's shoulders and knees.

Military.

a solid, usually spherical projectile for a cannon, rifle, pistol, etc., as distinguished from a shell.

projectiles, especially bullets, collectively.

EXPAND

any part of a thing, especially of the human body, that is rounded or protuberant: the ball of the thumb.

a round mass of food, as of chopped meat, dough, or candy.

Slang: Vulgar. a testis.

balls, Slang: Vulgar.

boldness; courage; brashness.

nonsense (often used as an interjection).

10.

bolus (def. 1).

11.

Horticulture. a compact mass of soil covering the roots of an uprooted tree or other plant.

12.

Literary. a planetary or celestial body, especially the earth.

13.

Mathematics. (in a metric space) the set of points whose distance from the zero element is less than, or less than or equal to, a specified number.

COLLAPSE

verb (used with object)

14.

to make into a ball (sometimes followed by up): The children were balling up snow to make a snowman.

15.

to wind into balls: to ball cotton.

16.

Slang: Vulgar. to have sexual intercourse with.

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Balls is always a great word to know.

So is ort. Does it mean:

a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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verb (used without object)

17.

to form or gather into a ball: When the spun sugar balls, the candy has cooked sufficiently.

18.

Slang: Vulgar. to have sexual intercourse.

Verb phrase

19.

ball up, Slang. to make or become utterly confused; muddle: The records had been all balled up by inefficient file clerks.

Idioms

20.

ball the jack, Slang.

to act with speed.

to stake everything on one attempt.

21.

carry the ball, to assume the responsibility; bear the burden: You can always count on him to carry the ball in an emergency.

22.

drop the ball, to make a mistake or miss an opportunity at a critical moment.

23.

keep the ball rolling, to continue or give renewed vigor to an activity already under way: When their interest lagged, he tried to keep the ball rolling.

24.

on the ball,

alert and efficient or effective: If you don't get on the ball, you'll be fired.

indicating intelligence or ability: The tests show your students don't have much on the ball. The new manager has a lot on the ball.

EXPAND

25.

play ball,

to begin or continue playing a game.

to start or continue any action.

to work together; cooperate: union leaders suspected of playing ball with racketeers.

26.

run with the ball, to assume responsibility or work enthusiastically: If management approves the concept, we'll run with the ball.

27.

start the ball rolling, to put into operation; begin: The recreation director started the ball rolling by having all the participants introduce themselves.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1175–1225; Middle English bal, balle < Old French < Germanic *ballaz; compare Old Norse bǫllr, Old High German bal, ballo, balla, German Ball, Dutch bal; perhaps akin to Latin follis leather bag; see ballock(s)

Related forms

ball·er, noun

Can be confused: bald, balled, bawled.

Example Sentences

Lost golf balls are conspicuous evidence of the sport's negative ecological impact.

They abandon clothing, microfridges, even bowling balls.

People were queuing for an unusual delicacy: balls of butter, dipped in dough and cooked in a vat of boiling oil.

EXPAND

Lost golf balls are conspicuous evidence of the sport's negative ecological impact.

They abandon clothing, microfridges, even bowling balls.

People were queuing for an unusual delicacy: balls of butter, dipped in dough and cooked in a vat of boiling oil.

Comets are balls of rock and ice that grow tails as they approach the sun in the course of their highly elliptical orbits.

Balls that appear distinctly orange and blue seem to last longer than average.

There are those that roll balls of howler monkey dung off leaves high in the treetops.

The package tells you how to make basic falafel balls.

Delivering game balls to the official before a football game isn't normally a big deal.

They discreetly hand the balls that carom inside to a ball boy or girl working the match.

They are kind of a damper, because she slips more, and it's not easy for her to dig balls out of the snow banks.

In effect, researchers are sending balls all the way to the moon and back.

Female scarab beetles deposit their eggs in balls of dung.

Balls that roll uphill, bathtubs that stretch and shrink, freaky faces and throbbing hearts.

They specialized in fortune-telling, using crystal balls and tarot cards among other things.

In winter, virtually stemless seed balls are carried three to seven along a single stalk.

These new balls and surfaces mean more strikes, which means higher scores and more perfect games.

The cue ball is driven by the stick to hit a number of object balls in succession.

The crowd thins as employers arrive and lottery balls are drawn.

Keidanren should press lawmakers for the reform if it has the balls.

But new digital images show these strands are only an illusion-sprites are actually made up of small, fast-moving balls of light.

Atmospheric interaction causing the ball to dip or curve happens when the balls speed and rotation slows.

He was in his element gossiping with belles about their beaux at balls.

Puffy balls of yellow, fragrant flowers in spring add to my plant list.

Both balls are attached by the same string, so the tension on the two balls will be the same magnitude, but opposite direction.

Look particularly closely at the pictures of the different variations of soccer balls.

Some dung beetles lay their eggs in dung balls that they have rolled.

They don't help with static cling, but they do soften the fibers by the tumbling of the balls in the drum.

Boys throw them balls along the waterfront and kneel to offer them bread.

Robots score by herding or kicking the balls into the opponent's goal.

They run round in circles, throw things, swim and of course hit and chase balls.

Grant that the universe is filled with atomic-size billiard balls.

Cut off pieces of dough and roll lightly between the palms to form balls.

We have these projectile cannons that shoot small balls.

Once the balls are as close as they can get, they should drop out of the fields or be caught again by the mags.

During this time, the balls start moving and pushing on the next ball in line.

The red, spiky balls indicate parts of the protein that are too close to one another, causing the player to lose points.

The goal is to get as many balls into your opponents goals as possible.

Imagine a pinball machine on multi-ball mode-only the balls are the size of planets.

It takes real balls to take virtual golf to the next level.

Researchers may finally have hit on why pulsars, the rotating balls of neutrons that pepper the universe, spin the way they do.

Laptops can be ruggedized with lots of duct tape, tennis balls and pipe insulation.

Fight or flight causes us to raise up on the balls of our feet.

Joby has brought its experience in squeezing its balls into ever tighter spots to the miniature, always-on tripod market.

But to date, all that's traveled through its circular beam pipe are ping-pong balls to test for obstructions.

Several models of crystal lattices sit beside the window, and a pyramid of tennis balls rises from the floor.

Butchers hang the balls up in the window so that you'll come in and buy some.

If you make the cake balls too large, they will fall of the stick while dipping.

Out of the park: signed balls soar into the stratosphere.

Whether you're rolling dough into balls for sugar cookies, using your thumb to indent jam-filled thumbprints, or crafting more.

But for now, consumers will have to settle for balls that keep.

When matzo balls are ready, use a slotted spoon to transfer them from water to soup.

Ask students to imagine that their cotton balls are dandelion seeds.

He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet in the boxer's way he.

Allen where you'll find everything from gum balls to kites to pinball machines.

In recent years in baseball, doctored bats have not been as prominent as doctored balls.

In baseball, umpires are supposed to call balls and strikes based on where a ball crosses home plate.

Invite them to blow on their cotton balls using their.

It is, after all, a creature that devotes much of its energy to rolling excrement into little balls for later consumption.

The emergency broadcast gives the rotund fur balls ample warning.

The experiment utilizes four pingpong-sized balls of.

People should be as smooth as bowling balls from the eyebrows on down.

Sadly, our politicians haven't the balls to tax petrol more than it is now and changes are that will never change.

Ancient squash seeds, peanuts, and cotton balls found in.

As the heavy balls crash into the wooden pins, hefty motors.

And the falafel is also made out of chick peas with sesame seeds and is made into balls.

The goal was for each team to unload cargoes of spongy, watermelon-size balls into trailers hitched to their opponents' robots.

We'd see huge balls of fish that would envelop us and move on".

There will be nine official balls and nearly twice as many unofficial parties.

Here's how to salvage the balls and save some beer money.

Shape the mix into balls and place on a watered board.

One woman sent her husband a large canvas bag full of golf balls so he could practice his golf skills from the deck of his ship.

The oil also emulsifies, forming mousse-a frothy mix of hydrocarbons and water-or clumps into so-called tar balls.

Oh yeah, and those weird deep-fried dough balls with the multi-colored candy sprinkles on them.

Upon arrival, they can sip champagne and hit golf balls before climbing aboard for the trip back.

So, more balls are hit there, but of lower consequence.

On the back of this normal-looking baseball cap is a reinforced pouch filled with about a pound of tiny metal balls.

At one point they enormous threw beach balls into the crowd.

The dung beetles come to the howler monkey dung and they form little balls of it, and then they bury.

But unlike ink, the balls can be rearranged again and again.

Or mold soccer balls out of the sap from a certain liana.

When prey balls tried to dive, dolphins herded them back up.

Some olive oil soap is still made by local olive farmers who imprint the soap balls with the family name.

The cotton balls should be as small as you can find, and completely white.

While the animals were indoors, they were kept stimulated with scented balls and nature films.

So the end result is a visible onslot of oil and tar balls coming ashore.

Definitely worth a golf clap for the enormous balls required to go out in such confidently facile fashion.

The utility has also installed large balls on its power lines to help birds avoid the cables.

Everyone knows that higher density snow balls work better, but how about a little physics to show this.

All of the babies had hatched for the season and were already big, fuzzy gray balls that are fiercely protected by their parents.

Six balls haphazardly careen around inside the largely barren rectangle of the game space.

Those piles of brown balls aren't wet enough to slip in, deep enough to trip in, or hard enough to twist an ankle on.

It was pretty hard by the time it got ashore in what they call tar balls here.

We're trying to distinguish between soccer balls and volleyballs".

The field of submerged golf balls would make an excellent hiding place for any monster to lay eggs.

Wakefield had the balls to question this medical consensus and it earned him the academic death penalty.

Features such as centre peaks, hexagonal walls and smooth basins are hard to explain shooting balls into sand.

Methinks sdad has taken a few too many balls to the head.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

a large, usually lavish, formal party featuring social dancing and sometimes given for a particular purpose, as to introduce debutantes or benefit a charitable organization.

Informal. a thoroughly good time: Have a ball on your vacation!

Origin:
1625–35; < French bal, noun derivative of baler (now baller) to dance < Late Latin ballāre < Greek (Magna Graecia) ballízein to dance

Link To Balls

Collins

World English Dictionary

balls (bɔːlz)

—*pl n*
1.	the testicles
2.	by the balls so as to be rendered powerless
3.	nonsense; rubbish
4.	courage; forcefulness

—*interj*
5.	an exclamation of strong disagreement, contempt, annoyance, etc

usage Both its anatomical senses and its various extended senses nowadays have far less impact than they used to, and seem unlikely to cause offence, though some older or more conservative people may object. Interestingly, its use in the sense of courage is exactly paralleled in the Spanish term «cojones»

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

ball

"dancing party," 1630s, from Fr., from O.Fr. baller "to dance," from L.L. ballare "to dance," from Gk. ballizein "to dance, jump about" (see ballistics). Hence, "very enjoyable time," 1945, Amer.Eng. slang, perhaps back to 1930s in black slang.

EXPAND

balls

"testicles," early 14c., from pl. of ball (1). See also ballocks. Meaning "courage, nerve" is from 1928. Balls to the wall, however, probably is from WWII Air Forces slang, from the ball that topped the aircraft throttle, thrust to the bulkhead of the cockpit to attain full

speed. Ball-busting "difficult" is first recorded 1944; ball-buster, disparaging for "dominant female," is from 1974.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

ball (bôl)
n.

A spherical object or mass.
A bezoar.
A large pill or bolus.

Slang Dictionary

ball definition

n.
a wild time at a party; a good time. : We really had a ball. See ya!
n.
a testicle. (Usually plural. Usually objectionable. See also balls.) : The teacher preferred “testicles” to “balls,” if they had to be mentioned at all.
in.
to enjoy oneself. (Ambiguous with the next sense.) : The whole crowd was balling and having a fine time.
in.
to depart; to leave. : It's late. Let's ball.
tv. & in.
to copulate [with] someone. (Usually objectionable.) : Isn't there anything more to you than balling?
in.
to play a ball game. (Probably a deliberate pun on sense 5.) : Bob's out balling with the guys.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

balls definition

n.
the testicles. (Usually objectionable.) : He got hit in the balls in the football game.
exclam.
of disbelief. (Usually an exclamation: Balls! Usually objectionable.) : Out of gas! Balls! I just filled it up!
n.
courage; bravado. (Usually refers to a male, but occasionally refers to female. Usually objectionable.) : He doesn't have enough balls to do that!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

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