curveball

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English

Etymology

curve +‎ ball

Noun

curveball (plural curveballs)

  1. (baseball) A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down "curve"
    Synonyms: (slang) curve, (slang) deuce, (slang) yakker
    He bit on a curveball in the dirt.
  2. (by extension, chiefly US) An unexpected turn of events initiated by an opponent or chance; an exception or outlier.
    Synonym: twist
    Life has thrown him a few curveballs.
    • 2015 March 10, David Sims, “Without Sam Simon, 'The Simpsons' Wouldn't Be What It Is Today”, in The Atlantic‎:
      The season’s first episode, “Bart Gets an F,” got the highest ratings in its history, but “Treehouse of Horror” was the real curveball: a genre-busting effort that proudly punched above the show’s expectations.
    • 2016 December 6, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Culture Wars in the Grammy Album Nominations”, in The Atlantic‎:
      There are two curveball nominations, one perhaps a popularity bid and the other a credibility bid. The popular one is Bieber’s Purpose.
    • 2017 June 13, Stephen Moss, “June likes to throw a curveball now and again”, in The Guardian‎:
      But from time to time, June throws up a curveball, in the shape of unusual and hard to predict meteorological events.
    • 2021 June 11, Ezra Klein, “Sam Altman on the A.I. Revolution, Trillionaires and the Future of Political Power” (32:37 from the start), in The Ezra Klein Show‎ (podcast), spoken by Sam Altman:
      And I think that’s an example of where faced with a seemingly intractable political reality, technology produces a solution that is a total curveball and not that imaginable a few decades ago.

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Verb

curveball (third-person singular simple present curveballs, present participle curveballing, simple past and past participle curveballed)

  1. (baseball) To throw a curveball.
    • 2006, William F. McNeil, The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball, McFarland, →ISBN, page 21:
      Even though the haughty physics professors at the elite school ridiculed his declaration that he could make a baseball curve, Cummings just laughed it off and said, “I curveballed them to death,” according to Frederick Ivor-Campbell.
    • 2009, James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover, Random House, →ISBN, page 566:
      The news curveballed him. He'd been hamstrung and schizzed all the preceding weeks. He brooded in his den.

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Further reading

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