ballistic

adjective

bal·lis·tic | \ bə-ˈli-stik

Definition of ballistic

1 : extremely and usually suddenly excited, upset, or angry : wild He went ballistic when he saw the dent in his car. and the crowd goes ballistic

2 : of or relating to the science of the motion of projectiles in flight

3 exercise : being or characterized by repeated bouncing ballistic stretching

4 physics, of an object in motion : behaving like a projectile But the Bell Labs switch uses such a low current that the few ballistic electrons are a distance of a micrometer or more apart …— Robert Pool

5 of a material : capable of resisting or stopping bullets or other projectiles ballistic glass ballistic nylon … engineered specifically to be worn under ballistic vests and shirts.— K. M. Reese

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Examples of ballistic in a Sentence

she went ballistic when she discovered her sister using her nail polish

Recent Examples on the Web

According to the task force, ballistic evidence connects the bullet that killed Gorski to the gun turned over to police, and gunpowder residue was found on Seplak. — Jim Newton, Lake County News-Sun, "Trial begins in fatal Libertyville shooting authorities have linked to jealousy," 10 June 2019 Still, the use of missiles by both sides in their proxy war in Yemen has led to civilian casualties, and is also leading other Middle Eastern states to expand their access to ballistic rocket weapons. — Tim Fernholz, Quartz, "The world is heading for a new missile arms race," 9 June 2019 Cooksey was arrested at the scene, and in the weeks that followed, detectives were allegedly able to link him and the gun used to ballistic evidence found at the scenes of several recent homicides. — Jon Schuppe, NBC News, "Suspected serial killer linked to nine deaths in Arizona, cops say," 18 Jan. 2018 Unlike the United States and Russia, China was not a signatory to the INF Treaty and developed a wide array of ballistic and cruise missiles to compensate for lack of long range attack aircraft and bombers. — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "Pentagon Prepares to Build Banned Missiles as Treaty Expires," 11 Mar. 2019 Flying at high speed within the atmosphere, these missiles wouldn't have the guidance problems of ballistic anti-ship missiles. — David Hambling, Popular Mechanics, "What You Need to Know About the South China Sea, the World's Next Hot Spot," 27 Feb. 2019 Russia also claims the U.S. has launched banned missiles as targets in anti-ballistic-missile tests. — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "Why the U.S. Is Quitting a Key Nuclear Weapons Treaty," 5 Dec. 2018 Washington has sought to constrain Iran’s ballistic-missile programs and counter its assertive posture in the region. — Sune Engel Rasmussen, WSJ, "Iran Vows to Continue Military Expansion Despite U.S. Threats," 11 Feb. 2019 This sent the Soyuz spacecraft on a ballistic return trajectory to Earth that saved the lives of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin. — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, "Two months after mishap, Russian Soyuz rockets back into space with crew," 3 Dec. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ballistic.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.