Word.ws English Dictionary

greaseball

greaseball noun: a person of Italian descent.

Noun

greaseball (plural greaseballs)

  1. (US, derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) A person of Italian descent.
    • (Italian)
  2. (US, derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) Any person of Mediterranean (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek) or Hispanic (Latin American) descent.
    • Do you think I wanted to walk across that stage and get my diploma and look down and see that fat greaseball sitting there? […] I got into a fraternity, too. It wasn’t one of the good ones, not with a name like Pinzetti, but a fraternity all the same.1982, Stephen King, Survivor Type
  3. (slang) A mechanic.
  4. (slang) A biker, a tough.
  5. (slang) A rocker or metalhead, especially one who listens to 1950s rock and roll or 1980s thrash metal.

Forms of greaseball

pluralgreaseballs

Origin of greaseball

From grease + -ball.; possibly derived from the fact that Italians and Italian-Americans are stereotyped as having greasy or greased-up hair.

Questions about greaseball

What does greaseball mean?
Greaseball means a person of Italian descent.
What part of speech is greaseball?
Greaseball is a noun.
What is the plural of greaseball?
The plural of greaseball is greaseballs.

Words near greaseball in the dictionary

  1. grease-painted
  2. grease-paints
  3. grease-pot
  4. grease-pots
  5. greaseable
  6. greaseball
  7. greaseballs
  8. greaseband
  9. greasebanded
  10. greasebanding
  11. greasebands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greaseball (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-greaseball.ogg.

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