Inkball

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The gall of an oak tree, used to produce ink.

    "The first tree I knew was an oak under which I played as a small child and gathered large inkballs that I used as marbles."

  2. 2
    A leather-covered dauber, stuffed with soft, resilient wadding, with a wooden handle, used to ink type forms for printing. A predecessor of brayers and self-inking presses. historical

    "[…]consider that this perfect work was done on a wooden press, that the form was inked by hand with inkballs or "daubers,"[…]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
dauber

Example

More examples

"The first tree I knew was an oak under which I played as a small child and gathered large inkballs that I used as marbles."

Etymology

From ink + ball.

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