foul ball
12
2.8
- noun
- /faʊl bɔl/
- US
:
bola foul
- During the baseball game, the umpire signaled that it was a foul ball when the ball landed outside the foul lines.
- catch a foul ball
- hit a foul ball
- chase a foul ball
Examples
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Up comes Youkilis, who begins his at-bat with five straight foul balls.
Blog text (9) -
A foul ball can score a runner or move one over.
Blog text (16) -
Was that a foul ball or what?
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Just one more foul ball.
Fiction book (2000) -
If you will recall, sir, I was hit in the head with a foul ball.
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There will be fewer foul balls caught for outs in Texas next year.
Blog text (10) -
A day later, players and coaches were still talking about Sandoval's foul ball that went out of the stadium down the first base line.
Blog text (10) -
It's a foul ball!
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Two of our runners… Almost managed to get to first base, and we did hit 17 foul balls.
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Sure enough, Howie Kendrick sliced two foul balls to the exact spot that I was heading for.
Blog text (23)
Antonyms
- Specialized
1
3.9
A ball hit by the batter that lands between the foul lines and is in play
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward adjective+noun composition: 'foul' (not in play/against the rules) modifies 'ball', so a learner who knows both words can infer it is a ball hit outside the play area and not in play. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common; while some cultural knowledge of baseball helps, the meaning is derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
Foul ball comes from baseball where the field has two long boundary lines called foul lines, and a ball hit outside those lines is called foul and seen as 'not in play'. That's why a foul ball means a ball hit outside the foul lines that does not count.