Word.ws English Dictionary

-ball

-ball suffix: refers to styles of football.

Suffix (1)

-ball

  1. (UK) Refers to styles of football.
    • Ange + -ball → Angeball
    • halal + -ball → halalball

Suffix (2)

-ball

  1. (derogatory, humorous, slang, usually) forms nouns with the meaning "one who is characterized by".
    • goof + -ball → goofball
    • corn + -ball → cornball
  2. (derogatory, humorous, slang, usually) forms adjectives with the meaning "characterized by".

Origin of -ball

Back-formation from football. Journalist Jamie Braidwood suggests it may have been inspired by Michael Lewis' 2003 book Moneyball and its 2011 film adaptation.

Likely from figurative use of ball.

Questions about -ball

What does -ball mean?
-ball means refers to styles of football.
What part of speech is -ball?
-ball is a suffix.

Words near -ball in the dictionary

  1. -azosin
  2. -ba-
  3. -bac-
  4. -bactam
  5. -bait
  6. -ball
  7. -bamate
  8. -barb-
  9. -berg
  10. -betasol
  11. -bie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ball (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “-ball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.