Knuckleball

noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A pitch thrown with the ball gripped on the fingertips and released with no rotation, which travels over an unpredictable path to the plate due to micro-turbulence in the air.

    "Even the pitcher doesn't know where his knuckleball is going."

  2. 2
    a baseball pitch thrown with little speed or spin wordnet
  3. 3
    A type of delivery where a fast bowler holds the ball on the knuckles of the index and middle fingers.
  4. 4
    An event that is hard to predict. figuratively, informal

    "Our vendor keeps throwing us knuckleballs."

Verb
  1. 1
    To pitch knuckleballs. intransitive

    "Varitek did not start so Kevin Cash could catch the knuckleballing starter Tim Wakefield."

Synonyms

All synonyms
bowlbugbutterfly ballcastchange upchuck

Example

More examples

"Even the pitcher doesn't know where his knuckleball is going."

Etymology

From knuckle + ball.

Related phrases

cut fastballsplit finger fastballtwo seam fastball

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