fastball
noun, verb
fastball is a noun meaning “A high-speed pitch of a baseball” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-S-T-B-A-L-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears 1.1 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fastball is fastballs.
What does fastball mean?
noun
- 1
A high-speed pitch of a baseball.
- 2
A four-seam fastball, which is a backspin pitch thrown with a ball gripped in the direction to cause four of the seams of the ball to cross the flight path and released with roughly equal pressure by the index and middle fingers
The pitcher had a blazing fastball.
verb
- 1
To throw (something) at a high speed.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce fastball?
- US
Fastball has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-fastball.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of fastball
- fastballs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- fastballing participle, present
- fastballed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fastball?
Fastball appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,150th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does fastball come from?
From fast (adjective) + ball.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).