blackball
verbEtymology From black + ball.
1
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.
- 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.1898, Willa Cather, The Westbound Train:
2
To ostracize.
- 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.1968 July, Stan Dryer, “The Fully Automated Love Life of Henry Keanridge”, in Playboy Magazine, page 152:
- 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."1990 February 4, Pam Mitchell, quoting Susan Moir, “Pro-Union And Queer”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 17:
1 more example
- The actor Katherine Kendall has revealed how the fear of being “blackballed” by Hollywood’s powerbrokers stopped her from making claims of sexual harassment.2017 October 21, Mark Townsend, “Weinstein accuser says she was scared to go public with harassment claim”, in The Observer, →ISSN:
- Derived terms
- blackballer