Word.ws English Dictionary

beachball

beachball is the alternative form of beach ball.

Meaning of beach ball

Noun

beach ball (plural beach balls)

  1. A large light inflatable ball, ideally suited to beach games.
  2. (informal) A spinning wait cursor in macOS.
  3. (figuratively) A successful shot on goal that should have been easily blocked.

Verb

beachball (third-person singular simple present beachballs, present participle beachballing, simple past and past participle beachballed)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To hang; to stop responding to user input.
    • Is Xcode “beachballing” forever on you when we try to open a project that was working fine the day before?2015, Magno Urbano, Troubleshooting Xcode, Apress, →ISBN, page 54

Forms of beachball

Noun
pluralbeachballs
Verb
third-person singular presentbeachballs
present participlebeachballing
past participlebeachballed
pastbeachballed

Origin of beachball

From beach + ball. For the computing sense, because Mac computers indicate waiting with a spinning coloured cursor like a beach ball.

Questions about beachball

What does beachball mean?
Beachball means to hang; to stop responding to user input.
What is beachball the alternative form of?
Beachball is the alternative form of beach ball.
What part of speech is beachball?
Beachball is a verb.
What is the past tense of beachball?
The past tense of beachball is beachballed.

Words near beachball in the dictionary

  1. beach-hopper
  2. beach-hoppers
  3. Beach-la-Mar
  4. Beacham
  5. Beachams
  6. beachball
  7. beachballed
  8. beachballing
  9. beachballs
  10. beachberries
  11. beachberry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beachball (page history and authors); beach 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-beachball.ogg.

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