Balls-out

adj, adv, slang

adj, adv, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Extreme; extremely great. US, idiomatic, not-comparable, slang

    "He's making a balls-out run for Motor City by nightfall."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Descriptive of the use of a centrifugal governor at maximum speed, corresponding to full throttle. not-comparable
  2. 2
    With great abandon. US, idiomatic, not-comparable, slang
  3. 3
    At the fastest possible speed. US, idiomatic, not-comparable, slang

Synonyms

All synonyms
expeditiouslyfull throttlefull-borequickly

Example

More examples

"He's making a balls-out run for Motor City by nightfall."

Etymology

Usually said to be from the maximum-speed state of a ball governor, whose balls are swung out to the near-horizontal position. Neither balls-out nor balls to the wall is connected with the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”) except connotationally via folk etymology. (In that vein of apparent vulgar innuendo, see also rock out with one's cock out.)

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.