balking

English

Alternative forms

• baulking

Verb

balking

1. present participle and gerund of balk

Noun

balking (plural balkings)

1. A frustration or disappointment; a check.
   • 1928, Daniel Bell Leary, Modern Psychology, Normal and Abnormal: A Behaviorism of Personality:

     This supernatural world is the world of fulfilled desire, the world where the balkings, the trials and tribulations, the sorrows and the sins are no more, and where life is as the personality would have it […]

Adjective

balking (comparative more balking, superlative most balking)

1. That balks.
   1. Tending to thwart or impede; frustrating.
      • 1881 June, “Athletics”, in The Carthusian, volume 3, number 79, page 60:

        For these, the ground chosen was especially hard and slippery, and in bad condition; and to add to this, the wind, which blew the lath about, was very balking to the competitors.

      • 1885, George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, page 370:

        Here was a very balking answer, but in spite of it, Harold could not help believing that Esther was very far from objecting to the sort of incense he had been offering just then.

      • 1893, Richard Wagner, Opera and drama, page 343:

        No Form was more balking and unfit for achievement of the genuine Drama , however , than the Opera-form with its once-for-all division into vocal num bers , quite heedless of the dramatic matter: however much our opera-composers might toil and moil to stretch them out and multiply them, the unyielding, disconnected botch-work could only fall to rags and tatters in the long run, —as we have seen in its own place.

      • 1896, Albert William Money, ‎Arthur Corbin Gould, Pigeon Shooting, page 68:

        On the shooter calling, "Pull," the trap would sometimes be pulled at once; at other times after a pause; nothing is more balking to a shooter and likely to make him miss than the latter.

      • 1900, Isabel Smith, The Minister's Guest, page 350:

        "Exactly. It is tiresome and very balking to have to leave one's business , " said the deacon , who could sympathize with the ready-made clothier's supposititious feelings .

      • 1905, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall Yard, page 903:

        Compared with the long rifle, we found it to be a less handy weapon; it is too heavy in the nose, and we found that the sight protectors that the author referred to were very balking for taking rapid aim .

   2. Causing one to pause or stop; disheartening.
      • 1860, Florence Nightingale, Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth:

        If there have not been the means to learn, if one knows nothing on a subject, to pretend or try to sympathize is more balking than to give it up.

      • 1901, Joel Swartz ·, Poems, page 228:

        "Forgive our debts as we also forgive," Goes like a quick and penetrating blade Between the inmost spirit and the soul, —Between the joints and marrow of the bones And shows the thoughts and feelings of the heart. One feels that even more than pardoned sin, He needs a likeness to a pardoning God. The hardness of this very balking prayer Is here perceived to be its noblest part .

      • 2009, B. Vithal Shetty, World as Seen Under the Lens of a Scientist, page 39:

        These experiences and early impression of my childhood days— the vast, timeless, and still blue sky studded with icy stars glittering like diamonds; the setting sun seemingly a red ball of fire; mountains, hills, and valleys; the tilling of soil and reaping of crops; the pouring of monsoon rain and the flood; and the balking summer heat and humidity, walking alone barefoot with the grazing cattle with so many lodged thorns in my bare feet; […]

   3. That refuses to cooperate or fails to behave in the desired and expected manner.
      • 1904 January, “Breaking Horses”, in Saddlery and Harness, volume 13, page 21:

        Nowhere else is the mean or unreliable horse so utterly unendurable, even for a day, as about a circus. The balking brute may throw a parade into confusion or cause the most exasperating delay in loading a train.

      • 1917, Francis Bail Pearson, Reveries of a Schoolmaster, page 33:

        Before this occurrence taught me the better way, I was quite prone, in dealing with a balking boy, to hold his mind upon the subject of balking.

      • 2010, Lorilee Craker ·, See How They Run, page 60:

        There are, however, a few tried and tested methods to this madness of making even the most balking child (that would be my beloved Ez) cooperate.

      • 2015, Bing-Yuan Cao, ‎Zeng-Liang Liu, ‎Yu-Bin Zhong, Fuzzy Systems & Operations Research and Management, page 256:

        But, there is no work about a general retrial time Geom/G/1 retrial queue with balking customers, a second optional service and Bernoulli vacation.

      • 2017, Knightley William Horlock, Recollections of a Fox-Hunter:

        To this humane new method succeeds a long dissertation on "Balking." which will probably prove very serviceable to American teamsters, with copious directions how to start and manage a balking horse or a balking team, about which the commonest British carter or waggoner knows quite as much as Mr. Rarey.

   4. (sports) That makes motions which attempt to deceive the opponent.
      • 2013, Peter E. Meltzer, So You Think You Know Baseball?, page 107:

        These large discrepancies must stem from inconsistencies in interpretation rather than the possibility that one crew was constantly drawing more balking pitchers than another.

      • 2016, Norman Keifetz, Belle of the Ball:

        Yes, I'm saying umpire shouldn't even make a balk call unless there is evidence that the balking player was deliberately trying to deceive the opposition.

      • 2016, Tom DeMichael, Baseball FAQ: All That's Left to Know About America's Pastime:

        A balking pitcher sends everyone home, including the runner on third—and the visiting team has another loss in the record book.

Derived terms

• balkingly

 

Anagrams

• blaking