Word.ws English Dictionary

on the ball

on the ball prepositional phrase: alert, active, or attentive; on top of things.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Alert, active, or attentive; on top of things.
    • If I had been more on the ball I would have asked when he called me.
  2. Being in control of the ball.
    • ...Rovers were also aided by some poor defending from West Brom, whose lapses at the back undid their excellent work on the ball and condemned Roberto di Matteo's Baggies side to a third straight defeat.2010 December 28, Kevin Darlin, “West Brom 1 - 3 Blackburn”, in BBC
  3. (Australian rules football) Playing as a midfielder.

Questions about on the ball

What does on the ball mean?
On the ball means alert, active, or attentive; on top of things.
What part of speech is on the ball?
On the ball is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the ball in the dictionary

  1. on the alert
  2. on the anvil
  3. on the back burner
  4. on the back foot
  5. on the back of
  6. on the ball
  7. on the bash
  8. on the basis of
  9. on the batter
  10. on the beach
  11. on the beat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the 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-on the ball.ogg.

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