Word.ws English Dictionary

ball off

ball off verb: to depart, especially quickly; to hurry away; to leave at a particular speed.

Verb

ball off (third-person singular simple present balls off, present participle balling off, simple past and past participle balled off)

  1. (dated, slang) To depart, especially quickly; to hurry away; to leave at a particular speed.
    • The ship balled off at 12 knots.
  2. (archaic) To spin rope-yarns into balls, in preparation for making spun yarn.

Forms of ball off

third-person singular presentballs off
present participleballing off
past participleballed off
pastballed off

Questions about ball off

What does ball off mean?
Ball off means to depart, especially quickly; to hurry away; to leave at a particular speed.
What part of speech is ball off?
Ball off is a verb.
What is the past tense of ball off?
The past tense of ball off is balled off.

Words near ball off in the dictionary

  1. ball of chalk
  2. ball of fire
  3. ball of fluff
  4. ball of malt
  5. ball of the thumb
  6. ball off
  7. ball out
  8. ball outs
  9. ball park
  10. ball park estimate
  11. ball park estimates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ball off (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.

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