noun
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minced beef, shaped into a ball before cooking
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slang a stupid or boring person
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of meatball
Explanation
Those delicious, savory spheres on your spaghetti? They're meatballs, nuggets of ground meat, spices, and bread crumbs. If you take ground beef, mix in ingredients like torn bread, eggs, and seasoning, and shape it into individual balls, you've got meatballs. They can be fried, simmered, or baked, and you can use whatever tastes good and sticks together to make them. Ancient Chinese and Roman cuisines both included variations on the meatball, so we've been eating these for centuries. And if you know someone who's nice enough but not very smart, you might call them a meatball.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
When the bill was first presented earlier this year, one group called it a "poisoned meatball".
From BBC ● Nov. 25, 2025
If this World Series is going to turn into a food fight about the economics of baseball, Dave Roberts tossed the first meatball.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2025
As the company weighed buying an additional meatball stuffer, which speeds up the process of filling the meatball, another option emerged in Crown.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2025
Developed in 1985 by Swedish chef Severin Sjöstedt, the meatball has been sold to hordes of fans ever since.
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2024
That way, if a stray meatball plummets to its death, he’ll be right there to catch it.
From "A Bird Will Soar" by Alison Green Myers
What about helmets wrapped to look like frozen meatballs or wheels of imported Parmesan?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
Many of Mr. Coppola’s recollections are sensory: roasted peppers, his grandma’s sizzling meatballs, a neighbor’s homemade wine sweetened with peaches—“smells and tastes that intoxicate me to this day.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Irish potatoes are about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs are Italian — a product of immigrant communities in America rather than the old country itself.
From Salon ● Mar. 17, 2026
The furniture company known for its Swedish meatballs and blocky “Kallax” shelving units has found a home inside the old Helms Bakery complex in Culver City.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2026
We were eating spaghetti and meatballs, only Dad had cooked, so it wasn’t very good, and the air was thick and heavy with July heat.
From "The Science of Breakable Things" by Tae Keller
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
