blackball

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From black +‎ ball.

• enPR: blăk'bôl', (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈblækbɔːl/
• (US, cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈblækbɑl/

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blackball (countable and uncountable, plural blackballs)

1. (countable) A rejection; a vote against admitting someone.
2. (countable) A black ball used to indicate such a negative vote.

   Regardless how many other people may have voted to approve a candidate for membership, a single blackball will reject the candidate.

3. (countable) A kind of large black sweet, a black-colored gobstopper.

   Synonym: (dated, offensive) niggerball

4. A substance for blacking shoes, boots, etc. or for taking impressions of engraved work.
5. (uncountable) A game, a standardized version of the English version of eight-ball.

   Synonym: reds and yellows

blackball (third-person singular simple present blackballs, present participle blackballing, simple past and past participle blackballed)

1. (transitive) To vote against, especially in an exclusive organization.

   If you're not from a moneyed, well-connected family, you can count on getting blackballed from the fraternity.

   • 1898, Willa Cather, The Westbound Train:

     Why, if I had known you all my life I should have grown up in the condition of Adam before the fall, and they would have blackballed me at the clubs.

2. (transitive) To ostracize.

   Synonyms: blacklist, send to Coventry; see also Thesaurus:ignore, Thesaurus:boycott

   • 1968 July, Stan Dryer, “The Fully Automated Love Life of Henry Keanridge”, in Playboy Magazine, page 152:

     Henry knew. If he were blackballed by this distaff Mafia, he was doomed: Endless, but always justifiable, delays would occur in the work he wanted typed.

   • 1990 February 4, Pam Mitchell, quoting Susan Moir, “Pro-Union And Queer”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 17:

     My father sure could have used a union. The monopoly that controlled the bank vault installation business blackballed him when he was in his late fifties because he'd gone to work for a rival company that immediately went belly-up. If he'd been in a union he'd have got his job back."

   • 2017 October 21, Mark Townsend, “Weinstein accuser says she was scared to go public with harassment claim”, in The Observer‎, →ISSN:

     The actor Katherine Kendall has revealed how the fear of being “blackballed” by Hollywood’s powerbrokers stopped her from making claims of sexual harassment.