ball vs block

ball

noun
  • A pitch that falls outside of the strike zone. 

  • Any sport or game involving a ball; its play, literally or figuratively. 

  • A solid or hollow sphere, or roughly spherical mass. 

  • A competitive event among young African-American and Latin American LGBTQ+ people in which prizes are awarded for drag and similar performances. See ball culture. 

  • Nonsense. 

  • A very enjoyable time. 

  • The set of points in a topological space lying within some open set containing a given point. 

  • An opportunity to launch the pinball into play. 

  • The globe; the earthly sphere. 

  • A pass; a kick of the football towards a teammate. 

  • The front of the bottom of the foot, just behind the toes. 

  • Courage. 

  • A large pill, a form in which medicine was given to horses; a bolus. 

  • A formal dance. 

  • The set of points in a metric space of any number of dimensions lying within a given distance (the radius) of a given point. 

  • A single delivery by the bowler, six of which make up an over. 

  • In 3-dimensional Euclidean space, the volume bounded by a sphere. 

  • A leather-covered cushion, fastened to a handle called a ballstock; formerly used by printers for inking the form, then superseded by the roller. 

  • A roundish, protuberant portion of some part of the body. 

  • An object that is the focus of many sports and games, in which it may be thrown, caught, kicked, bounced, rolled, chased, retrieved, hit with an instrument, spun, etc., usually roughly spherical but whose size, weight, bounciness, colour, etc. differ according to the game 

  • A jacketed non-expanding bullet, typically of military origin. 

  • One thousand US dollars. 

  • A quantity of string, thread, etc., wound into a spherical shape. 

verb
  • To reject from a fraternity or sorority. (Short for blackball.) 

  • To form or wind into a ball. 

  • To gather balls which cling to the feet, as of damp snow or clay; to gather into balls. 

  • To punish by affixing a ball and chain. 

  • To have sexual intercourse with. 

  • To heat in a furnace and form into balls for rolling. 

  • To play basketball. 

  • To be hip or cool. 

intj
  • An appeal by the crowd for holding the ball against a tackled player. This is heard almost any time an opposition player is tackled, without regard to whether the rules about "prior opportunity" to dispose of the ball are fulfilled. 

block

noun
  • A shot played by holding the bat vertically in the path of the ball, so that it loses momentum and drops to the ground. 

  • A temporary or permanent ban that prevents access to an online account or service, or connection to or from a designated telephone number, IP address, or similar. 

  • A wig block: a simplified head model upon which wigs are worn. 

  • A case or frame housing one or more sheaves (pulleys), used with ropes to increase or redirect force, for example as part of lifting gear or a sailing ship's rigging. See also block and tackle. 

  • A cellblock. 

  • The popping crease. 

  • A logical extent or region; a grouping or apportionment of like things treated together as a unit. 

  • A fixed-length group of bits making up part of a message. 

  • A logical data storage unit containing one or more physical sectors (see cluster). 

  • Solitary confinement. 

  • A section of split logs used as fuel. 

  • A blockhole. 

  • A portion of a macromolecule, comprising many units, that has at least one feature not present in adjacent portions. 

  • Something that prevents something from passing. 

  • A physical area or extent of something, often rectangular or approximately rectangular. 

  • A joined group of four (or in some cases nine) postage stamps, forming a roughly square shape. 

  • An action to interfere with the movement of an opposing player or of the object of play (ball, puck). 

  • A contiguous range of Unicode code points used to encode characters of a specific type; can be of any size evenly divisible by 16, up to 65,536 (a full plane). 

  • The perch on which a bird of prey is kept. 

  • A defensive play by one or more players meant to deflect a spiked ball back to the hitter’s court. 

  • A substantial, often approximately cuboid, piece of any substance. 

  • A mould on which hats, bonnets, etc., are shaped. 

  • A region of code in a program that acts as a single unit, such as a function or loop. 

  • A contiguous group of urban lots of property, typically several acres in extent, not crossed by public streets. 

  • The position of a player or bat when guarding the wicket. 

  • A chopping block: a cuboid base for cutting or beheading. 

  • The distance from one street to another in a city or suburb that is built (approximately) to a grid pattern. 

  • The human head. 

  • A discrete group of vines in a vineyard, often distinguished from others by variety, clone, canopy training method, irrigation infrastructure, or some combination thereof. 

  • Interference or obstruction of cognitive processes. 

  • A set of sheets (of paper) joined together at one end, forming a cuboid shape. 

  • A roughly cuboid building. 

  • A section of a railroad where the block system is used. 

verb
  • To hit with a block. 

  • To wait for some condition to become true. 

  • To specify the positions and movements of the actors for (a section of a play or film). 

  • To prevent (something or someone) from passing. 

  • To bar (someone undesirable) from connecting via telephone, instant messaging, etc., or from accessing an online account or service, or similar. 

  • To play a block shot. 

  • To stretch or mould (a knitted item, a hat, etc.) into the desired shape. 

  • To shape or sketch out roughly. 

  • To fill or obstruct (something) so that it is not possible to pass. 

  • To impede (an opponent or opponent's play). 

  • To prevent (something from happening or someone from doing something). 

  • To bar (a message or communication), or bar connection with (an online account or service, a designated telephone number, IP address, etc.). 

How often have the words ball and block occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )