Ball

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia.

Related to Ball: Ball games

ball

1. a round or roundish body, either solid or hollow, of a size and composition suitable for any of various games, such as football, golf, billiards, etc

2. Cricket a single delivery of the ball by the bowler to the batsman

3. Baseball a single delivery of the ball by a pitcher outside certain limits and not swung at by the batter

4. Vet science another word for bolus

5. Horticulture the hard mass of roots and earth removed with the rest of the plant during transplanting

Ball

John. died 1381, English priest: executed as one of the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt (1381)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ball

(from French baile). (1) Conventional unit (in English, number) for measuring stages or intensity of certain phenomena (for example, in meteorology for measuring wind and cloud velocities; in seismology, the force of the vacillating crust of the earth).

(2) A numerical notation (in English, mark or grade) of evaluation of the academic progress and behavior of students. In the general-education schools of prerevolutionary Russia, both five-ball and 12-ball systems were used. In the USSR, a five-ball system was introduced into the primary, eight-year, secondary, and specialized secondary schools in 1944 and remains in effect to the present day. According to this system, 5 means excellent, 4 is good, 3 is satisfactory, 2 is poor, and 1 is very poor. In the schools of certain other countries, the highest ball may be 1 (for example, in the German Democratic Republic, which uses a five-ball system), or a different number of balls, may be used (for example, a 10 is used in the Netherlands and an 11 in Italy).

(3) Numerical measurement (in English, point) of the results of a contest in some types of sport (such as gymnastics, swimming, and figure skating).

(4) Evaluation of the quality of agricultural livestock in exhibitions.

(5) As used in balloting [to refer to the small object dropped into the box or urn in some forms of secret voting].

Ball

an item of sports equipment, usually spherical, having the property of elastic deformation. It is used primarily in team sports.

Most balls, for example, those used in soccer, volleyball, basketball, and rugby, are hollow (with a casing and a rubber bladder).

Table 1
Sport¹	Circumference at diameter cross section (mm)	Weight (g)
¹ Children’s balls for these sports are lighter in weight and smaller in circumference.
² Handballs for women are lighter in weight and smaller in circumference
Basketball ..............	750–800	600–650
Water polo ..............	680–710	400–450
Volleyball ..............	640–660	260–280
Rugby ..............	760–790
	(long axis)
	600–650	375–425
	(short axis)
Handball² ..............	580–600	425–475
Soccer ..............	680–700	400–450
Tennis ..............	200–208	56.7–58.5
Table tennis ..............	37.2–38.2	2.40–2.53

Some balls consist of a dense, compact core, made by molding various materials, and are covered with a casing of synthetic materials or leather (for example, those used in bandy and field hockey). A special group consists of hollow balls (without bladder chambers) with a constant pressure (for example, tennis balls, table-tennis balls, and balls used in artistic gymnastics).

The color of balls used in different games is strictly regulated: white for table tennis, badminton, and field hockey, and orange for bandy. Balls used in soccer, volleyball, handball, and water polo are traditionally made of 18 or 32 sections according to specified configurations. For the sizes and weights of sports balls see Table 1.

The ball used for playing badminton is a shuttlecock, which consists of a plastic or cork head, usually covered with rubber, and a cone-shaped plastic or feather stabilizer. The diameter of the head is 25–28 mm, and the greatest diameter of the stabilizer is 65 mm. The overall length of the shuttlecock measures 65–70 mm, and the weight ranges from 4.5 to 4.8 g.

In addition to sports balls, there are stuffed balls, which are used for training purposes, for example, medicine balls that weigh from 1 to 5 kg. Balls fastened to springs or pulleys and balls suspended from ropes are used in various sports training devices.

V. V. PAKHOMOV

What does it mean when you dream about a ball?

Balls can indicate everything from a game or some other form of relaxation to memories from our childhood. Balls can also have metaphorical connotations, such as being “tossed around,” “the ball’s in your court,” “having a ball” (having a good time) and “having balls” (courage). Any of these may be helpful in determining the meaning of this dream. A deeper, more universal symbolism is that circles and balls represent completeness and wholeness.

ball

[bȯl]

(geology)

A low sand ridge, underwater by high tide, which extends generally parallel with the shoreline; usually separated by an intervening trough from the beach.

A spheroidal mass of sedimentary material.

Common name for a nodule, especially of ironstone.

(mechanical engineering)

In fine grinding, one of the crushing bodies used in a ball mill.

(ordnance)

A bullet for general use, as distinguished from bullets for special uses such as armor-piercing, incendiary, or high explosive.

A small-arms solid propellant which is oblate spheroidal in shape, generally a double-base propellant.

References in classic literature ?

Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark them: they are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on the ball the moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it across to the opposite goal.

The School-house are being penned in their turn, and now the ball is behind their goal, under the Doctor's wall.

They may well be angry, for it is all Lombard Street to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with the ball touched in such a good place.

Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball. There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over the close from the goal- keepers under the Doctor's wall.

Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do, to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their goal.

But now Griffith's baskets are empty, the ball is placed again midway, and the School are going to kick off.

"Are you ready?" "Yes." And away comes the ball, kicked high in the air, to give the School time to rush on and catch it as it falls.

The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest.

View in context

I shall have many fellowmourners for the ball, if not for Frank Churchill; but Mr.

She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball taken place, she did not think Jane could have attended it; and it was charity to impute some of her unbecoming indifference to the languor of illhealth.

View in context

After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls.

View in context

This was a little joke of John's; he used to say that a regular course of "the Birtwick horseballs" would cure almost any vicious horse; these balls, he said, were made up of patience and gentleness, firmness and petting, one pound of each to be mixed up with half a pint of common sense, and given to the horse every day.