Spitball

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  spitball \spit"ball`\, spit ball \spit" ball`\, n.
     1. Paper chewed, and rolled into a ball, to be thrown as a
        missile; -- a childish prank.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. (Baseball) A pitched ball in throwing which the pitcher


        grips the ball between two, or three, fingers on one side
        (which is made slippery, as by saliva) and the thumb on
        the other side, and delivers it so that it slips off the
        fingers with the least possible friction; -- also called
        {spitter}. When pitched directly overhand a spit ball
        darts downward, when pitched with the arm extended
        sidewise it darts down and out. The use of such a pitch is
        against the rules of professional baseball. [Cant] --
        {Spit baller}.
        [Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  spitball
       n 1: a projectile made by chewing a piece of paper and shaping it
            into a sphere
       2: an illegal pitch in which a foreign substance (spit or
          Vaseline) is applied to the ball by the pitcher before he
          throws it [syn: {spitter}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  36 Moby Thesaurus words for "spitball":
     bowl, cast, change of pace, change-up, chuck, chunk, curve,
     downcurve, fastball, fling, flip, forward pass, heave, hurl,
     incurve, knuckleball, lateral, lateral pass, lob, outcurve, pass,
     peg, pitch, put, screwball, serve, service, shot-put, shy, sinker,
     slider, sling, spitter, throw, toss, upcurve