balk
The definition of balk is to stop or hold back from doing something.
(verb)- An example of something at which someone might balk is cleaning up a mess that he did not make.
- An example of an animal that may balk is a mule.
Balk is defined as to create a hindrance or a barrier.
(verb)An example of something that may balk your chances to finish college is a refusal by a lender to provide financial aid.
See balk in Webster's New World College Dictionary
noun
- a ridge of unplowed land between furrows
- a roughly hewn piece of timber
- a beam used in construction
- something that obstructs or thwarts; check, hindrance, disappointment, etc.
- Obsolete a blunder; error
- Baseball an illegal motion by the pitcher, such as an uncompleted motion to throw to a base, while one foot is on the rubber: it entitles each base runner to advance one base
- Billiards any of the outer spaces between the cushions and the balkline
Origin: ME balke < OE balca, a bank, ridge < IE *bhelg- (extended stem of *bhel-, a beam) > Ger balken, beam, Gr phalanx, L fulcrum
transitive verb
- Obsolete to make balks in (land)
- to obstruct or thwart; foil
- Archaic to miss or let slip by
- Baseball to force (a base runner to score from third base) by committing a balk
intransitive verb
- to stop and obstinately refuse to move or act
- to hesitate or recoil (at)
- to make a balk in baseball
Related Forms:
- balker noun
See balk in American Heritage Dictionary 4
verb balked, balk·ing, balks verb, intransitive
- To stop short and refuse to go on: The horse balked at the jump.
- To refuse obstinately or abruptly: She balked at the very idea of compromise.
- a. Sports To make an incomplete or misleading motion.b. Baseball To make an illegal motion before pitching, allowing one or more base runners to advance one base.
- To check or thwart by or as if by an obstacle.
- Archaic To let go by; miss.
- A hindrance, check, or defeat.
- Sports An incomplete or misleading motion, especially an illegal move made by a baseball pitcher.
- Games One of the spaces between the cushion and the balk line on a billiard table.
- a. An unplowed strip of land.b. A ridge between furrows.
- A wooden beam or rafter.
Origin:
Origin: Middle English balken, to plow up in ridges
Origin: , from balk, ridge
Origin: , from Old English balca
Origin: and from Old Norse balkr, beam
.Related Forms:
- balkˈer noun
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