How to Use spitball in a Sentence

spitball

noun
  • The kids were shooting spitballs at each other.
  • Splatter paints, stems for flowers, spitball fights!
    — Lauren Silbert, PEOPLE, 8 Oct. 2025
  • Splatter paints, stems for flowers, spitball fights!
    — Lauren Silbert, PEOPLE, 24 June 2026
  • This one tosses some amusing spitballs.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 6 Dec. 2025
  • Please, a bully who just the day before shot a spitball into a classmate’s ear.
    — Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2019
  • Like when Tony got a spitball stuck under young Travis’ eyelid.
    — Ryan Kartje, Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2022
  • Screwball, knuckleball, spitball, from down by his hip to up around his ear and all points in between.
    — Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati.com, 29 Mar. 2020
  • In one month, based on this spitball conjecture, that could be $12 billion in fines.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • His signature pitch was a spitball, the preferred offering of the era.
    — Tommy Birch, USA TODAY, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Claw machines could have been relics, lost to the ‘90s alongside spitball shooters and mall photobooths.
    — Anna Rahmanan, thehustle.co, 9 Jan. 2026
  • That said, with the trade deadline now in view, some of the spitballs soon will have to start to stick to walls if indeed the Red Sox are to upgrade.
    — Alex Speier, BostonGlobe.com, 29 July 2019
  • Renlund could practice no medicine on the mound, of course, since doctoring a baseball (think spitball) is strictly forbidden.
    — David Noyce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 28 July 2022
  • The class clowns who merrily threw spitballs at New York’s artistic landscape three decades ago are now, in more ways than one, seniors.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 7 May 2017
  • The perpetrators and proponents of the Gehry design have been throwing spitballs for years.
    — George Weigel, National Review, 27 Sep. 2017
  • Other reminders of the Vietnam era are hazy spitball takes on just what the nature and duration of our commitment is.
    — Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 2026
  • There also used to be a type of pitch called a spitball, when a pitcher would literally spit on the ball or lick his fingers and rub them around on the ball before throwing it.
    — Aj Willingham, CNN, 1 July 2020
  • Online, political memes flew back and forth like spitballs, and even some of the most innocent ones (like that fish tube) took on a sense of ecstatic nihilism.
    — Emma Grey Ellis, Wired, 21 Dec. 2019
  • While Choate worked with one student, others performed the online equivalent of passing notes in class, or firing spitballs.
    — Steve Rubenstein, SFChronicle.com, 19 Mar. 2020
  • And America was not yet locked in its forever spitball war between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces.
    — Joe Heim, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2019
  • Having to indulge every amateur suggestion in a spitballing session can feel as offensive as if the spitballs were literal.
    — Karla L. Miller, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Feb. 2023
  • Having to indulge every amateur suggestion in a spitballing session can feel as offensive as if the spitballs were literal.
    — Karla L. Miller, Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The right-hander was one of the final spitball pitchers in baseball history and finished his career with 254 victories.
    — Tommy Birch, USA TODAY, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Its construction was the result of a spitball Indiana threw at Chicago in 1953.
    — Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 25 Sep. 2022
  • Slippery elms are also used for furniture and other commercial purposes, and before the rules of baseball forbade it, pitchers would chew on the bark to throw a better spitball.
    — Connor Giffin, The Courier-Journal, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Like the kid in the back of the classroom tossing spitballs and making fart sounds, a journal of subversive humor is funny only if there’s someone up front attempting to maintain order.
    — David Von Drehle, The Denver Post, 7 July 2019
  • This is a rule originally implemented years ago to address safety concerns with the unpredictable trajectory of the spitball.
    — Michael Peregrine, Forbes, 15 June 2021
  • Representing Super has taken on a tough job, reviving a sagging brand while activist investors send spitballs in from the outside and competitors look to take share.
    — Evan Clark, Footwear News, 14 Oct. 2025
  • That included two of the doctor’s own children, one so disruptive a teacher put him in a large cardboard box in the classroom and one who made regular trips to the principal’s office, often for firing spitballs.
    — Graydon Megan, chicagotribune.com, 28 Aug. 2019
  • And yet, gradually, despite the consternation of his aides (and the authors’ narrative intent), Trump emerges as more than just a needy adolescent throwing spitballs at the deep state.
    — Joe Klein, Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2020
  • Gone are the days when pundits had to rely on time-consuming analysis of historical precedents and critical trends and spitball takes on showbiz community consensus to make their picks.
    — Todd Longwell, Variety, 20 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'spitball.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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