Word.ws English Dictionary

ink-ball

ink-ball is the alternative form of inkball.

Meaning of inkball

Noun

inkball (plural inkballs)

  1. The gall of an oak tree, used to produce ink.
    • The first tree I knew was an oak under which I played as a small child and gathered large inkballs that I used as marbles.1946, William A. Murrill, Familiar trees
  2. (historical) A leather-covered dauber, stuffed with soft, resilient wadding, with a wooden handle, used to ink type forms for printing. A predecessor of brayers and self-inking presses.
    • […]consider that this perfect work was done on a wooden press, that the form was inked by hand with inkballs or "daubers,"[…]1977, Maurice Annenberg, A Typographic journey through the Inland printer, 1883-1900

Forms of ink-ball

pluralink-balls

Questions about ink-ball

What is ink-ball the alternative form of?
Ink-ball is the alternative form of inkball.

Words near ink-ball in the dictionary

  1. ink trap
  2. ink traps
  3. ink up
  4. ink well
  5. ink wells
  6. ink-ball
  7. ink-block
  8. ink-blocks
  9. ink-cap
  10. ink-caps
  11. ink-dot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ink-ball (page history and authors); inkball (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: “ink-ball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ink-ball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.