See airball on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "air",
"3": "ball"
},
"expansion": "air + ball",
"name": "af"
}
],
"etymology_text": "* From air + ball.\n* The first recorded use of the \"airball\" chant was on February 24, 1979, during a college basketball game between the Duke University Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels after the Tar Heels' Rich Yonakor took a shot which missed the rim.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "airballs",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
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{
"args": {},
"expansion": "airball (plural airballs)",
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Basketball",
"orig": "en:Basketball",
"parents": [
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"Human activity",
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{
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"parents": [
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"examples": [
{
"text": "As soon as the shot left his hands, the spectators could see it was going to be an airball.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1990 April 3, David Levine, “COLLEGE BASKETBALL; Fordham Defeats Iona to Advance”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Johnson also could have tied the game, at 66-66 with 14 seconds left. But his jump shot was an airball. From that scramble Lopez emerged with the first of his key foul shots.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 April 13, Bill Oram, “Remembering Kobe Bryant’s final game: Five years later, five untold stories about the Lakers legend’s 60-point night”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Bryant’s path to becoming a champion, after all, began with a series of infamous misses: his playoff airballs as a rookie against Utah. Clarkson sees those airballs as a metaphor for Bryant’s clunky start against the Jazz two decades later.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A shot that misses the backboard, rim and net entirely."
],
"id": "en-airball-en-noun-PTFPgYkt",
"links": [
[
"basketball",
"basketball"
],
[
"backboard",
"backboard"
],
[
"rim",
"rim"
],
[
"net",
"net"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(basketball) A shot that misses the backboard, rim and net entirely."
],
"topics": [
"ball-games",
"basketball",
"games",
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"word": "airball"
}
{
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"args": {
"1": "en",
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},
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"name": "af"
}
],
"etymology_text": "* From air + ball.\n* The first recorded use of the \"airball\" chant was on February 24, 1979, during a college basketball game between the Duke University Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels after the Tar Heels' Rich Yonakor took a shot which missed the rim.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "airballs",
"tags": [
"present",
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"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "airballing",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "airballed",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "airballed",
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"head_templates": [
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"expansion": "airball (third-person singular simple present airballs, present participle airballing, simple past and past participle airballed)",
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],
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "2022 August 8, Jared Weiss, “Jayson Tatum opens up on lessons from Celtics’ finals loss, Kevin Durant trade”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Tatum struggled with fatigue through the final two rounds of the postseason and was exhausted to the point he was airballing shots by the time the Warriors were closing out the championship.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2024 January 23, Zach Harper and Shams Charania, “Joel Embiid’s 70-point NBA welcome to Victor Wembanyama. Plus, Shams on Heat-Hornets trade”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "The Timberwolves lost 128-125 when KAT airballed a falling 30-footer at the buzzer.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To throw an airball."
],
"id": "en-airball-en-verb-dNWAv5Xu",
"links": [
[
"basketball",
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]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(basketball, transitive) To throw an airball."
],
"tags": [
"transitive"
],
"topics": [
"ball-games",
"basketball",
"games",
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
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]
}
],
"word": "airball"
}
{
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"etymology_templates": [
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"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "air",
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},
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"name": "af"
}
],
"etymology_text": "* From air + ball.\n* The first recorded use of the \"airball\" chant was on February 24, 1979, during a college basketball game between the Duke University Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels after the Tar Heels' Rich Yonakor took a shot which missed the rim.",
"forms": [
{
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{
"args": {},
"expansion": "airball (plural airballs)",
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}
],
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"pos": "noun",
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{
"categories": [
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"English terms with usage examples",
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],
"examples": [
{
"text": "As soon as the shot left his hands, the spectators could see it was going to be an airball.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1990 April 3, David Levine, “COLLEGE BASKETBALL; Fordham Defeats Iona to Advance”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Johnson also could have tied the game, at 66-66 with 14 seconds left. But his jump shot was an airball. From that scramble Lopez emerged with the first of his key foul shots.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 April 13, Bill Oram, “Remembering Kobe Bryant’s final game: Five years later, five untold stories about the Lakers legend’s 60-point night”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Bryant’s path to becoming a champion, after all, began with a series of infamous misses: his playoff airballs as a rookie against Utah. Clarkson sees those airballs as a metaphor for Bryant’s clunky start against the Jazz two decades later.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A shot that misses the backboard, rim and net entirely."
],
"links": [
[
"basketball",
"basketball"
],
[
"backboard",
"backboard"
],
[
"rim",
"rim"
],
[
"net",
"net"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(basketball) A shot that misses the backboard, rim and net entirely."
],
"topics": [
"ball-games",
"basketball",
"games",
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"word": "airball"
}
{
"categories": [
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"English entries with incorrect language header",
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{
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],
"etymology_text": "* From air + ball.\n* The first recorded use of the \"airball\" chant was on February 24, 1979, during a college basketball game between the Duke University Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels after the Tar Heels' Rich Yonakor took a shot which missed the rim.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "airballs",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "airballing",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "airballed",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "airballed",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "airball (third-person singular simple present airballs, present participle airballing, simple past and past participle airballed)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs",
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],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2022 August 8, Jared Weiss, “Jayson Tatum opens up on lessons from Celtics’ finals loss, Kevin Durant trade”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "Tatum struggled with fatigue through the final two rounds of the postseason and was exhausted to the point he was airballing shots by the time the Warriors were closing out the championship.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2024 January 23, Zach Harper and Shams Charania, “Joel Embiid’s 70-point NBA welcome to Victor Wembanyama. Plus, Shams on Heat-Hornets trade”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "The Timberwolves lost 128-125 when KAT airballed a falling 30-footer at the buzzer.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To throw an airball."
],
"links": [
[
"basketball",
"basketball"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(basketball, transitive) To throw an airball."
],
"tags": [
"transitive"
],
"topics": [
"ball-games",
"basketball",
"games",
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"word": "airball"
}
Download raw JSONL data for airball meaning in All languages combined (4.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.