softball

Noun

softball (countable and uncountable, plural softballs)

1. A game similar to baseball but played with a larger and softer ball which can be thrown overhand or underhand.
   • This will give you someone with whom you can trade softball complaints, which any veteran game-goer will tell you is the key to a good time.1996, Andrew Heller, Come Heller High Water, →ISBN, page 55
2. The ball used to play the sport.
3. (by analogy, also attibutive) A question designed to be easy to answer.
   • a softball interview
   • Each man got his share of softballs on Friday night. But for 90 minutes in a dressed-up basketball arena at Washington University, the two candidates were also forced to address the kind of questions they get rarely if ever on the campaign trail: from voters who doubted them and maybe did not even...2004 September 10, James Bennett, “In a Disguised Gym, Softballs and Political Drama”, in The New York Times