balking
balking is the present participle and gerund of balk.
Adjective
balking (comparative more balking, superlative most balking)
- Tending to thwart or impede; frustrating.
- For these, the ground chosen was especially hard and slippery, and in bad condition; and to add to this, the wind, which blew the lath about, was very balking to the competitors.1881 June, “Athletics”, in The Carthusian, volume 3, number 79, page 60
- Here was a very balking answer, but in spite of it, Harold could not help believing that Esther was very far from objecting to the sort of incense he had been offering just then.1885, George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, page 370
- Causing one to pause or stop; disheartening.
- If there have not been the means to learn, if one knows nothing on a subject, to pretend or try to sympathize is more balking than to give it up.1860, Florence Nightingale, Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth
- "Forgive our debts as we also forgive," Goes like a quick and penetrating blade Between the inmost spirit and the soul, —Between the joints and marrow of the bones And shows the thoughts and feelings of the heart. One feels that even more than pardoned sin, He needs a likeness to a pardoning God....1901, Joel Swartz ·, Poems, page 228
- That refuses to cooperate or fails to behave in the desired and expected manner.
- Nowhere else is the mean or unreliable horse so utterly unendurable, even for a day, as about a circus. The balking brute may throw a parade into confusion or cause the most exasperating delay in loading a train.1904 January, “Breaking Horses”, in Saddlery and Harness, volume 13, page 21
- Before this occurrence taught me the better way, I was quite prone, in dealing with a balking boy, to hold his mind upon the subject of balking.1917, Francis Bail Pearson, Reveries of a Schoolmaster, page 33
- That makes motions which attempt to deceive the opponent.
- These large discrepancies must stem from inconsistencies in interpretation rather than the possibility that one crew was constantly drawing more balking pitchers than another.2013, Peter E. Meltzer, So You Think You Know Baseball?, page 107
- Yes, I'm saying umpire shouldn't even make a balk call unless there is evidence that the balking player was deliberately trying to deceive the opposition.2016, Norman Keifetz, Belle of the Ball
Meaning of balk
Verb
balk (third-person singular simple present balks, present participle balking, simple past and past participle balked)
- To be unwilling to do something; to refuse to proceed or do or allow something, either in general or only temporarily.
- balked at paying a day's wages for a pencil; he said he would buy her one, but when he saw the price, he balked
- To stop short and refuse to go on or do something (such as jump).
- The horse balked.
- Synonyms:
- jib
- To move fitfully, stopping frequently.
- The horses balked up the canyon, / But we made it with half a load. / Got to the top with panniers. / Went back for the bedding stowed.1915, L. J. Dickinson, John O' Dreams, page 80
- To leave or make a balk or balks (ridges) in; to leave a ridge in by leaving partly unploughed.
- But so well halt no man the plough, / That he ne balketh other while[c. 1386–1390, John Gower, edited by Reinhold Pauli, Confessio Amantis of John Gower: Edited and Collated with the Best Manuscripts, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III) (in Middle English)...
- To stop, check, block (by or as if by an obstacle); to hinder, impede, thwart.
- My Sport is always balkt, or cut short — I stumble over the Game me I would pursue —1733, William Congreve, The Old Batchelor: A Comedy, page 55
- To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles.
- Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights, / Balk'd in their own blood did Sir Walter see.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
Noun
balking (plural balkings)
- A frustration or disappointment; a check.
- This supernatural world is the world of fulfilled desire, the world where the balkings, the trials and tribulations, the sorrows and the sins are no more, and where life is as the personality would have it […]1928, Daniel Bell Leary, Modern Psychology, Normal and Abnormal: A Behaviorism of Personality
Forms of balking
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | baulking |
| Noun | |
| plural | balkings |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more balking |
| superlative | most balking |
Origin of balking
By surface analysis, balk + -ing.
Words formed from balking
Questions about balking
- What does balking mean?
- Balking means a frustration or disappointment; a check.
- What is balking the present participle and gerund of?
- Balking is the present participle and gerund of balk.
- What part of speech is balking?
- Balking can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of balking?
- The plural of balking is balkings.
Words near balking in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: balking (page history and authors); balk (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: “balking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/balking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.