Airball
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A shot that misses the backboard, rim and net entirely.
"As soon as the shot left his hands, the spectators could see it was going to be an airball."
- 2 An unfunny joke or remark. slang
- 1 To throw an airball. transitive
"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."
- 2 To make an awfully unfunny joke or remark. slang
Example
More examples"As soon as the shot left his hands, the spectators could see it was going to be an airball."
Etymology
* From air + ball. * 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.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.