furball
noun
furball is a noun meaning “Synonym of hairball; a ball of fur, especially one coughed up by a cat” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-U-R-B-A-L-L, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of furball is furballs.
What does furball mean?
noun
- 1
Synonym of hairball; a ball of fur, especially one coughed up by a cat.
- 2
informalA particularly furry person or animal.
Near-synonyms: fuzzball, fluffball
- 3
slangA large, disorganized battle involving many different aircraft (especially fighters) or warships.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce furball?
- Australia
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-furball.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of furball
- furballs plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is furball?
Furball appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 111,684th 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).
Furball in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense furry person or animal:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | boule de poils |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does furball come from?
From fur + ball.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).