Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Blackball   /blˈækbˌɔl/   Listen
noun
Blackball  n.  
1.
A composition for blacking shoes, boots, etc.; also, one for taking impressions of engraved work.
2.
A ball of black color, esp. one used as a negative in voting; in this sense usually two words.


verb
Blackball  v. t.  (past & past part. blackballed; pres. part. blackballing)  
1.
To vote against, by putting a black ball into a ballot box; to reject or exclude, as by voting against with black balls; to ostracize. "He was blackballed at two clubs in succession."
2.
To blacken (leather, shoes, etc.) with blacking.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Blackball" Quotes from Famous Books



... entirely neglected. I attended no school at this time, either summer or winter, and came as near acquiring a trade as I have ever done. In fact I longed to be able to make the whole of a boot, to last, peg, trim, gum, blackball and stone it, all processes of the craft as then practised. But how does one know when he is learning? I was laying up a good store of things more valuable than any in books, whilst the free life I led was preparing in me the soft and impressionable tablets on which could be traced future experiences ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... to finish that one. You're a matchmaking old maid," declared Esme, wrinkling her delicate nose at him, "and if you're ever put up for our sewing-circle I shall blackball you. Gossip!" ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... construction of this Index. We, that are not by name included, may we consider ourselves indirectly licensed? Silence, I should think, gives consent. And if it wasn't that the present Pope, being a horrid Radical, would be sure to blackball me as an honest Tory, I would send him a copy of my Opera Omnia, requesting his Holiness to say, by return of post, whether I ranked amongst the chaff winnowed by St. Peter's flail, or had his gracious ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey


Copyright © 2026 Dictionary One.com