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Balking   /bˈɔkɪŋ/   Listen
verb
Balk  v. t.  (past & past part. balked; pres. part. balking)  
1.
To leave or make balks in. (Obs.)
2.
To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles. (Obs.) "Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights, Balk'd in their own blood did Sir Walter see."
3.
To omit, miss, or overlook by chance. (Obs.)
4.
To miss intentionally; to avoid; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk. (Obs. or Obsolescent) "By reason of the contagion then in London, we balked the inns." "Sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat." "Nor doth he any creature balk, But lays on all he meeteth."
5.
To disappoint; to frustrate; to foil; to baffle; to thwart; as, to balk expectation. "They shall not balk my entrance."


Balk  v. i.  
1.
To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition. (Obs.) "In strifeful terms with him to balk."
2.
To stop abruptly and stand still obstinately; to jib; to stop short; to swerve; as, the horse balks. Note: This has been regarded as an Americanism, but it occurs in Spenser's "Faerie Queene," Book IV., 10, xxv. "Ne ever ought but of their true loves talkt, Ne ever for rebuke or blame of any balkt."
3.
(Baseball) To commit a balk (6); of a pitcher.


Balk  v. i.  To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Balking" Quotes from Famous Books



... workmen on the banks watched Old Jezebel romp over their working place and they swore large and vivid oaths regarding what they would do to her once they got to balking her again. It was about noon that a buckboard drawn by two good horses stopped at the foot of the cable tower. The driver called to Iron Skull Williams, who was chewing a toothpick and chatting to Pen. Williams led Pen ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... balking at Hamerton that his line is graceful. He belongs to the old-fashioned school which did not dream, much less approve, of modern tonal effects in their plates. A Lalanne etching is as clean and vivid as a photograph (not an "art" photograph). It is also as hard. Atmosphere, in the material ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... aware that their lives and our own depended upon their good behavior, galloped over the plain that separated us from the woods without once balking, although I feared and expected it every moment. After we reached the trees where the fire was raging severely, and where it was impossible to discover the path which we had followed when we were on ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... fixed rules, by which it enforces social continuity and connection. To neglect these throws one off the ring; and, with rare exceptions, isolation is barrenness and death. One cannot even go into the street in a wilfully strange costume, without establishing repulsions and balking relations between him and his neighbors which destroy their use to each other. Every man is bound to the actual form of society by his necessities at least, if not by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... if those coons aren't fixing to build a fire under him!" exclaimed Decker. "They'd rather fool with a balking mule than eat watermelon! Let's go out to see ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice


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