Word.ws English Dictionary

played ball

played ball is the simple past and past participle of play ball.

Meaning of play ball

Verb

play ball (third-person singular simple present plays ball, present participle playing ball, simple past and past participle played ball)

  1. (idiomatic) To start anything tumultuous.
  2. (idiomatic) To work together; to cooperate.
    • The politicians refused to play ball with the journalists.
  3. An expression used at the beginning of a game of baseball or softball.

Questions about played ball

What is played ball the simple past and past participle of?
Played ball is the simple past and past participle of play ball.

Words near played ball in the dictionary

  1. played along
  2. played around
  3. played at
  4. played away
  5. played back
  6. played ball
  7. played big
  8. played booty
  9. played both sides against the middle
  10. played by ear
  11. played by the rules

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played ball (page history and authors); play 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.

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