Loading page
say it: bawk
balk is a noun and verb meaning "the area on a billiard table behind the balkline". It carries 5 recorded senses.
the area on a billiard table behind the balkline
“a player with ball in hand must play from the balk”
something immaterial that interferes with or delays action or progress
an illegal pitching motion while runners are on base
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for balk come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.