lowball

lowball adjective: significantly below the actual cost or value. Also the clipping of lowball glass.

Adjective

lowball

Significantly below the actual cost or value.
- In April, NASA selected SpaceX to build the lunar lander for the Artemis program, thanks in part to a lowball $2.9 billion bid.2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2021
- At the meeting last Wednesday during which these changes were announced, the interim head of the NEH also estimated that each of the 250 statues would cost $100,000 to $200,000, bringing the total cost as high as $50 million. And this may have been a lowball figure.2025 April 15, Gal Beckerman, “Looks Like Mussolini, Quacks Like Mussolini”, in The Atlantic

lowball (plural lowballs)

The position of the ball on an American railroad ball signal that indicated Stop.
A form of poker in which the lowest-ranking poker hand wins the pot. Usually the ace is the lowest-ranking card, straights and flushes do not count making the best possible hand being A, 2, 3, 4, 5 regardless of suits (in contrast to deuce-to-seven lowball.)
A form of cribbage in which the first to score 121 (or 61) is the loser.
An unmixed alcohol drink served on ice or water in a short glass.

lowball (third-person singular simple present lowballs, present participle lowballing, simple past and past participle lowballed)

(transitive) To give an intentionally low estimate of anything, not necessarily with deceptive intent.
- It may be, but it is worth noting that if the mortality rate is as low as 0.7% as some experts now hope rather than between 3 and 5% as the data suggests so far, that is still a lot of dead Americans. Californian health officials are bracing for a 56% infection rate. In New York, they are talking...2020, Trump's ambitious plan as the US becomes the COVID-19 pandemic's new epicentre (Planet America), spoken by John Barron (John Barron), ABC News In-depth (YouTube)
(transitive) To give (a customer) a deceptively low price or cost estimate that one has no intention of honoring or to prepare a cost estimate deliberately and misleadingly low.
- A few other news flashes from the interview: The president of the United States thinks that the government should not pay its bills in full. It should lowball its contractors and force them to accept half payment, he said.2025 February 19, Tom Nichols, “Who Is Running the United States, Musk or Trump?”, in The Atlantic
(transitive) To make an offer well below an item's true value, often to take advantage of the seller's desperation or desire to sell the item quickly.

lowball is also the clipping of lowball glass.

Noun
plural	lowballs
Verb
third-person singular present	lowballs
present participle	lowballing
past participle	lowballed
past	lowballed

American railroad term that described one of two positions of the ball of a ball signal. Compare highball.

What does lowball mean?: Lowball means significantly below the actual cost or value.
What part of speech is lowball?: Lowball can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.

Adapted from Wiktionary: lowball (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-lowball.wav.

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