spitball

From spit +‎ ball.

spitball (plural spitballs)

1. (baseball) A pitch of a baseball that has been partly covered with saliva, illegal at most levels.
2. A balled-up piece of paper, moistened with saliva (by chewing) and shot through a drinking straw. [from 19th c.]

   Alternative form: spit-ball

spitball (third-person singular simple present spitballs, present participle spitballing, simple past and past participle spitballed)

1. (baseball) To moisten the ball with saliva before pitching it.
2. (figurative, originally US) To brainstorm ideas. [from 1940s]
   • 1992, Aaron Sorkin, A Few Good Men:

     Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, maybe, we have a responsibility as officers to train Santiago.

   • 2008, David Wain, Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, Timothy Dowling, 01:09:07 from the start, in Role Models:

     —Yes, Wheeler?
     —Question. Maybe a stupid one, but I'm just spitballing here.

   • 2025 June 14, Nigel Andrews, “They don't come any bigger”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 13:

     What happens, though, if you, the filmmaker, can't get the malevolence to work? That's where Jaws had its happy misfortune, its felix culpa. When the mechanical sharks failed to work […] [Steven] Spielberg and his cast had nothing to do but hole up evening after evening in a Martha's Vineyard house and spitball about the script, story and characters.

• spitballer

• “spitball v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present
• Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “spitball”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

• ball pits