What's Trending Now
More Trending Words
Definition of curveball
: a slow or moderately fast baseball pitch thrown with spin to make it swerve downward and usually to the left when thrown from the right hand or to the right when thrown from the left hand
curveball
verbFrom the M-W Editors
Examples of curveball in a Sentence
The batter struck out on a curveball.
Recent Examples of curveball from the Web
-
Perez opened the inning by yanking a first-pitch curveball into left field.
-
Robertson doesn’t throw hard, averaging a relatively light 92 mph on his four-seam fastball, but the 32-year-old Alabama product uses a darting changeup and hard curveball to keep opponents off balance and rack up strikeouts.
-
Eduardo Escobar tacked on an RBI single before Sano crushed an 0-2 curveball that hung over the plate into the bullpen for a 6-0 lead.
-
Did Mara and Bell pull a Britney and K-Fed-style curveball and literally throw a surprise wedding?
-
The report mentions one final curveball: the 2nd-gen Pixel XL will be squeezable, just like the HTC U 11.
-
On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Brantley jumped on a full count curveball for an RBI double to right-centerfield.
-
Norris threw some good curveballs in the loss to the Giants.
-
As excellent pitching analyst Nick Pollack of PitcherList.com noted, Quintana had lost as much as six inches of vertical drop on his formerly excellent curveball.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'curveball.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
First Known Use of curveball
1936
CURVEBALL Defined for English Language Learners
curveball
play
noun
Definition of curveball for English Language Learners
-
baseball : a pitch that is thrown with spin so that the ball curves in the air
Learn More about curveball
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up curveball? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
Writing? Check your grammar now!