to head the ball
1
4.6
- phrasal verb
:
cabecear
- Brandon Holley sent the ball into the box from the right corner, and Mitch Kinney was there to head the ball into the top-left corner.
Examples
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Rhythmic skills (e.g., an explosive start on landing after jumping to head the ball, or an elegant dribble after a feint).
Blog text (11) -
Time was running out at the end of the contest when England's goalie, Joe Hart, rushed out of his area to try to head the ball to safety.
Blog text (4) -
Pauline kept encouraging them; however, they would attempt to head the ball when she was watching them directly.
Academic text (1996) -
Get him to play behind Jack and let him be the target man to either head the ball on to Jack or to hold it up and play it to the wings.
Blog text (15) -
Philadelphia Union's Gabriel Farfan heads the ball.
Blog text (6) -
Gray headed the ball over the hands of Ingram, tying the game at 1-1 on her fourth goal of the season.
Blog text (20) -
In the waning minutes of the first half, Daysi Serrano headed the ball cleanly into the back of the net.
Blog text (15) -
Mattituck sophomore James Hayes leaps against a Livonia defender to try to head the ball in Saturday's Class B semifinal at Middletown High School.
Blog text (31) -
In the soccer match, he jumped high to head the ball into the goal.
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She practiced every day to improve her ability to head the ball accurately during games.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to strike the ball using one's head' is directly and literally derived from combining 'head' (the body part, here understood as the instrument) with 'ball' — i.e. using the head to hit the ball. This is a transparent, compositional use (a common noun-to-verb conversion) and is cross-linguistically obvious, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The verb head the ball comes from football: a player uses their head to hit the ball, often by jumping, so it means 'to hit the ball with one's head'.