Word.ws English Dictionary

wait for the ball to drop

wait for the ball to drop verb: to wait in expectation of an occurrence.

Verb

wait for the ball to drop (third-person singular simple present waits for the ball to drop, present participle waiting for the ball to drop, simple past and past participle waited for the ball to drop)

  1. (idiomatic, rare) To wait in expectation of an occurrence.

Forms of wait for the ball to drop

third-person singular presentwaits for the ball to drop
present participlewaiting for the ball to drop
past participlewaited for the ball to drop
pastwaited for the ball to drop

Origin of wait for the ball to drop

An allusion to the Times Square Ball, and perhaps other time balls.

Questions about wait for the ball to drop

What does wait for the ball to drop mean?
Wait for the ball to drop means to wait in expectation of an occurrence.
What part of speech is wait for the ball to drop?
Wait for the ball to drop is a verb.
What is the past tense of wait for the ball to drop?
The past tense of wait for the ball to drop is waited for the ball to drop.

Words near wait for the ball to drop in the dictionary

  1. wait and see
  2. wait around
  3. wait for
  4. wait for Godot
  5. wait for it
  6. wait for the ball to drop
  7. wait for the cat to jump
  8. wait for the dust to settle
  9. wait for the other shoe to drop
  10. wait in the wings
  11. wait on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wait for the ball to drop (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-wait for the ball to drop.ogg.

Cite this entry: “wait for the ball to drop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wait_for_the_ball_to_drop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.