Word.ws English Dictionary

blue-ball

blue-ball verb: to leave (a person, usually a man) sexually frustrated by denying them an orgasm or abruptly ending sexual contact.

Verb

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

  1. (slang, transitive, vulgar) To leave (a person, usually a man) sexually frustrated by denying them an orgasm or abruptly ending sexual contact.
    • “Stop blue-balling the guy and give in already.”2009, Kate Brian, Paradise Lost, Simon & Schuster UK, →ISBN, unnumbered page
    • I'm not even upset; I'm just tired of being blue-balled and tired of being rejected. It's just sad to see that I have to argue about having sex with my wife.2010, Doctor Lover, Dr. Lover, Mr. Lies: Cheating 101, E. C. Publishing (2010), unnumbered page
  2. (broadly, idiomatic, transitive) To lead someone on or tease them with the promise of something desirable without actually delivering it, causing them to feel frustrated and unsatisfied.
    • Stop blue-balling me and tell me what happened!
    Synonyms:
    tease, lead on, tantalize

Synonyms of blue-ball

Forms of blue-ball

third-person singular presentblue-balls
present participleblue-balling
past participleblue-balled
pastblue-balled
alternative formblueball

Origin of blue-ball

From blue balls.

Words formed from blue-ball

Questions about blue-ball

What does blue-ball mean?
Blue-ball means to leave (a person, usually a man) sexually frustrated by denying them an orgasm or abruptly ending sexual contact.
What part of speech is blue-ball?
Blue-ball is a verb.
What is the past tense of blue-ball?
The past tense of blue-ball is blue-balled.

Words near blue-ball in the dictionary

  1. blue-and-gold macaws
  2. blue-and-white
  3. blue-and-whites
  4. blue-and-yellow macaw
  5. blue-and-yellow macaws
  6. blue-ball
  7. blue-balled
  8. blue-baller
  9. blue-ballers
  10. blue-balling
  11. blue-balls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blue-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-blue-ball.ogg.

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