BLACKBALL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Blackball

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/blˈækbˌɔl/ Listen

noun

Blackball n.

A composition for blacking shoes, boots, etc.; also, one for taking impressions of engraved work.

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)

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."

To blacken (leather, shoes, etc.) with blacking.

See images of 'Blackball'

Etymology of 'Blackball'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Blackball" Quotes from Famous Books

... the rock. The peons had first balked at this, but the superintendent had told them the bones were merely strange shapes of ore, ordered them to break up the skulls and throw them in with the rest, and threatened to discharge and blackball any man who talked ...

— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... casuistical 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 permission to hold myself ...

— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey