See curveball in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for curveball meaning in English (7.1kB)
{
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{
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{
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{
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{
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"word": "screwball"
},
{
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"word": "softball"
},
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
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"word": "knuckleball"
}
],
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{
"_dis1": "0 0",
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"A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down \"curve\""
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"(baseball) A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down \"curve\""
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{
"_dis1": "80 20",
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
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"word": "llançament de corba"
},
{
"_dis1": "80 20",
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
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"word": "balle courbe"
},
{
"_dis1": "80 20",
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"masculine"
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"word": "Curveball"
},
{
"_dis1": "80 20",
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
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"word": "bola curva"
},
{
"_dis1": "80 20",
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"word": "bola curva"
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"text": "Life has thrown him a few curveballs.",
"type": "example"
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{
"ref": "2015 March 10, David Sims, “Without Sam Simon, 'The Simpsons' Wouldn't Be What It Is Today”, in The Atlantic",
"text": "The season’s first episode, “Bart Gets an F,” got the highest ratings in its history, but “Treehouse of Horror” was the real curveball: a genre-busting effort that proudly punched above the show’s expectations.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 December 6, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Culture Wars in the Grammy Album Nominations”, in The Atlantic",
"text": "There are two curveball nominations, one perhaps a popularity bid and the other a credibility bid. The popular one is Bieber’s Purpose.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2017 June 13, Stephen Moss, “June likes to throw a curveball now and again”, in The Guardian",
"text": "But from time to time, June throws up a curveball, in the shape of unusual and hard to predict meteorological events.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 June 11, Ezra Klein, “Sam Altman on the A.I. Revolution, Trillionaires and the Future of Political Power” (32:37 from the start), in The Ezra Klein Show (podcast), spoken by Sam Altman",
"text": "And I think that’s an example of where faced with a seemingly intractable political reality, technology produces a solution that is a total curveball and not that imaginable a few decades ago.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"An unexpected turn of events initiated by an opponent or chance; an exception or outlier."
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"(by extension, chiefly US) An unexpected turn of events initiated by an opponent or chance; an exception or outlier."
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{
"form": "curveballing",
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{
"ref": "2006, William F. McNeil, The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball, McFarland, page 21",
"text": "Even though the haughty physics professors at the elite school ridiculed his declaration that he could make a baseball curve, Cummings just laughed it off and said, “I curveballed them to death,” according to Frederick Ivor-Campbell.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2009, James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover, Random House, page 566",
"text": "The news curveballed him. He'd been hamstrung and schizzed all the preceding weeks. He brooded in his den.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To throw a curveball."
],
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],
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"(baseball) To throw a curveball."
],
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{
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{
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{
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],
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"word": "curveball"
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],
"word": "two-seam fastball"
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{
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"games",
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],
"word": "split-finger fastball"
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],
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"(baseball) A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down \"curve\""
],
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"text": "The season’s first episode, “Bart Gets an F,” got the highest ratings in its history, but “Treehouse of Horror” was the real curveball: a genre-busting effort that proudly punched above the show’s expectations.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 December 6, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Culture Wars in the Grammy Album Nominations”, in The Atlantic",
"text": "There are two curveball nominations, one perhaps a popularity bid and the other a credibility bid. The popular one is Bieber’s Purpose.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2017 June 13, Stephen Moss, “June likes to throw a curveball now and again”, in The Guardian",
"text": "But from time to time, June throws up a curveball, in the shape of unusual and hard to predict meteorological events.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021 June 11, Ezra Klein, “Sam Altman on the A.I. Revolution, Trillionaires and the Future of Political Power” (32:37 from the start), in The Ezra Klein Show (podcast), spoken by Sam Altman",
"text": "And I think that’s an example of where faced with a seemingly intractable political reality, technology produces a solution that is a total curveball and not that imaginable a few decades ago.",
"type": "quotation"
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],
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"(by extension, chiefly US) An unexpected turn of events initiated by an opponent or chance; an exception or outlier."
],
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"word": "twist"
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],
"tags": [
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{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "llançament de corba"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "balle courbe"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "Curveball"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "bola curva"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "pitch in baseball",
"tags": [
"feminine"
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"word": "bola curva"
}
],
"word": "curveball"
}
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"related": [
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"word": "knee-buckler"
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{
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{
"word": "breaking pitch"
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"ref": "2006, William F. McNeil, The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball, McFarland, page 21",
"text": "Even though the haughty physics professors at the elite school ridiculed his declaration that he could make a baseball curve, Cummings just laughed it off and said, “I curveballed them to death,” according to Frederick Ivor-Campbell.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2009, James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover, Random House, page 566",
"text": "The news curveballed him. He'd been hamstrung and schizzed all the preceding weeks. He brooded in his den.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To throw a curveball."
],
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(baseball) To throw a curveball."
],
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"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"word": "curveball"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). 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.