Adjacent Words

screwball definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: foolish; totally unsound; "a crazy scheme"; "half-baked ideas"; "a screwball proposal without a prayer of working" [syn: crazy, half-baked, screwball, softheaded] n
1: a whimsically eccentric person [syn: crackpot, crank, nut, nut case, fruitcake, screwball]
2: a pitch with reverse spin that curves toward the side of the plate from which it was thrown

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Date: 1926 1. a baseball pitch that spins and breaks in the opposite direction to a curve 2. a whimsical, eccentric, or crazy person ; zany II. adjective Date: circa 1936 crazily eccentric or whimsical ; zany

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & adj. US sl. --n. a crazy or eccentric person. --adj. crazy.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(screwballs) 1. Screwball comedy is silly and eccentric in an amusing and harmless way. (INFORMAL) ...a remake of a '50s classic screwball comedy. ADJ: ADJ n 2. If you say that someone is a screwball, you mean that they do strange or crazy things. (INFORMAL) N-COUNT [disapproval]

Moby Thesaurus

abnormal, alien, aliene, anomalous, balmy, bananas, barmy, bats, batty, beany, bedlamite, bonkers, borderline case, bowl, buggy, bughouse, bugs, case, cast, change of pace, change-up, character, chuck, chunk, crackbrain, crackers, crackpot, crank, crankish, cranky, crotchety, cuckoo, curve, daffy, dement, demoniac, deviant, deviative, different, ding-a-ling, dippy, divergent, dotty, downcurve, eccentric, energumen, erratic, exceptional, fanatic, fastball, fey, flake, flaky, fling, flip, flipped, forward pass, fou, freak, freaked-out, freakish, fruitcakey, fruity, funny, gaga, goofy, harebrain, haywire, heave, hermit, hobo, hurl, idiocratic, idiosyncratic, idiot, incurve, irregular, just plain nuts, kinky, knuckleball, kook, kooky, lateral, lateral pass, lob, lone wolf, loner, loon, loony, loopy, lunatic, madman, maggoty, maniac, maverick, meshuggenah, natural, noncompos, nonconformist, nut, nuts, nutty, odd, odd fellow, oddball, oddity, off the hinges, off the track, off the wall, original, outcurve, outsider, pariah, pass, peculiar, peg, phrenetic, pitch, potty, put, queer, queer duck, queer fish, queer specimen, quirky, rara avis, raving lunatic, recluse, round the bend, screwballs, screwy, serve, service, shot-put, shy, singular, sinker, slaphappy, slider, sling, solitary, spitball, spitter, strange, strange duck, throw, toss, tramp, twisted, type, unconventional, unnatural, upcurve, wacky, weirdo, whimsical, zealot