handball
noun, verb
Forms handballs handballing handballed
- noun A ball held in, or thrown with, the hand, especially one used for one of the various games in later senses, below.
- noun (now rare) The hollow rubber ball squeezed to produce spray from a perfume bottle or other atomizer.
- noun Any of various traditional ball games played outside between two goals often at a considerable distance from each other.
- noun Any of several games similar to fives, in which a ball is hit by the hand against a wall or within a walled court (the chief variants now being Gaelic handball and American handball).
- noun (uncountable) A sport played on a rectangular court between two teams of seven players each, using a small ball struck only with the hands; team handball.
- noun (uncountable, Australia) A schoolyard game in which a bouncy ball is struck with the hand, played on an improvised court on the asphalt or pavement.
- noun (countable, Australian rules football) An act of passing a football by holding it with one hand and hitting it with the other.
- noun (countable, soccer) The offence of a player other than the goalkeeper touching the ball with the hand or arm on the field during play.
- verb (transitive) To manually load or unload a container, trailer, or to otherwise manually move bulk goods (often on pallets) from one type of transport receptacle to another.
- verb (soccer) To illegally touch the ball with the hand or arm. “If the defender handballs in the penalty area, a penalty is awarded.”
- verb (Australian rules football) To (legally) pass a football by holding it with one hand and hitting it with the other.
- verb (Australia, slang) To pass responsibility for a task or problem to someone else, often to avoid dealing with an undesirable task or a tricky question.
- verb (sexuality, slang) To insert a hand into someone's anus.
Synonyms
European handball Olympic handball team handball sport involving bouncing a ball off a wall handle offload
Etymology
From hand + ball.
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “handball”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details