Word.ws English Dictionary

spitball

spitball noun: a pitch of a baseball that has been partly covered with saliva, illegal at most levels.

Noun

spitball (plural spitballs)

  1. A pitch of a baseball that has been partly covered with saliva, illegal at most levels.
  2. A balled-up piece of paper, moistened with saliva (by chewing) and shot through a drinking straw.

Verb

spitball (third-person singular simple present spitballs, present participle spitballing, simple past and past participle spitballed)

  1. To moisten the ball with saliva before pitching it.
  2. (figuratively) To brainstorm ideas.
    • Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, maybe, we have a responsibility as officers to train Santiago.1992, Aaron Sorkin, A Few Good Men
    • —Yes, Wheeler?
      —Question. Maybe a stupid one, but I'm just spitballing here.2008, David Wain, Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, Timothy Dowling, 01:09:07 from the start, in Role Models

Forms of spitball

Noun
pluralspitballs
Verb
third-person singular presentspitballs
present participlespitballing
past participlespitballed
pastspitballed

Origin of spitball

From spit + ball.

Words formed from spitball

Questions about spitball

What does spitball mean?
Spitball means a pitch of a baseball that has been partly covered with saliva, illegal at most levels.
What part of speech is spitball?
Spitball can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of spitball?
The plural of spitball is spitballs.

Words near spitball in the dictionary

  1. Spitalfields
  2. spitalhouse
  3. spitalhouses
  4. Spitalny
  5. spitals
  6. spitball
  7. spitballed
  8. spitballer
  9. spitballers
  10. spitballing
  11. spitballs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spitball (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:

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