Fastball

How to spell fastball

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fastball

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fastball mean?

1. nounA baseball pitch thrown at high speed, relying on velocity rather than curve or deception.

Fastball in a sentence

• The pitcher's fastball clocked in at almost ninety-five miles per hour.

• The rookie could barely make contact with such a blazing fastball.

Where does fastball come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent modern compound built from two very old English-language pieces. The first element, fast, descends from the Old English fæst, which originally meant 'firm' or 'fixed' (as in 'hold fast') and only later shifted toward the sense of 'moving quickly', since something firmly driven moves rapidly. The second element, ball, came into English from a Germanic source related to the Old Norse böllr, meaning a round body or sphere. The compound itself is American, coined in the language of baseball in the late nineteenth century to name a pitch thrown with maximum velocity rather than spin or trickery. Because both halves are common everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises: it is simply fast and ball joined with no extra letters.

How the word is built

• fast (rapid, from Old English fæst)
• ball (round object, plaything)