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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

handball.

A ball.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun
  1. A ball. A ball held in, or thrown with, the hand, especially one used for one of the various games in later senses, below.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A ball. The hollow rubber ball squeezed to produce spray from a perfume bottle or other atomizer.

    archaic · countable · uncountable
  3. A game. Any of various traditional ball games played outside between two goals often at a considerable distance from each other.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A game. 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).

    countable · uncountable
  5. A game. 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.

    uncountable
  6. A game. A schoolyard game in which a bouncy ball is struck with the hand, played on an improvised court on the asphalt or pavement.

    Australia · uncountable
  7. An action. An act of passing a football by holding it with one hand and hitting it with the other.

    countable
  8. An action. The offence of a player other than the goalkeeper touching the ball with the hand or arm on the field during play.

    countable
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *handuz Proto-West Germanic *handu Old English hand Middle English hond English hand Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-der. Proto-Germanic *balluz Old English *beall Middle English bal English ball English handball From hand + ball.

verb
  1. 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.

    transitive
  2. To illegally touch the ball with the hand or arm.

    If the defender handballs in the penalty area, a penalty is awarded.
  3. To (legally) pass a football by holding it with one hand and hitting it with the other.

  4. To pass responsibility for a task or problem to someone else, often to avoid dealing with an undesirable task or a tricky question.

    Australia · slang
  5. To insert a hand into someone's anus.

    slang
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *handuz Proto-West Germanic *handu Old English hand Middle English hond English hand Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-der. Proto-Germanic *balluz Old English *beall Middle English bal English ball English handball From hand + ball.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.