balk

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To stop short and refuse to go on: The horse balked at the jump.
2. v. To refuse obstinately or abruptly: She balked at the very idea of compromise.
3. v. Sports To make an incomplete or misleading motion.
4. v. Baseball To make an illegal motion before pitching, allowing one or more base runners to advance one base.
5. v. To check or thwart by or as if by an obstacle.
6. v. Archaic To let go by; miss.
7. n. A hindrance, check, or defeat.
8. n. Sports An incomplete or misleading motion, especially an illegal move made by a baseball pitcher.
9. n. Games One of the spaces between the cushion and the balk line on a billiard table.
10. n. An unplowed strip of land.
11. n. A ridge between furrows.
12. n. A wooden beam or rafter.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A ridge; especially, a ridge left unplowed in the body of a field, or between fields; an uncultivated strip of land serving as a boundary, often between pieces of ground held by different tenants. The latter use originated in the open-field system (which see, under field). [Common in provincial English and Scotch.]
2. n. A piece missed in plowing.
3. n. An omission; an exception.
4. n. A blunder; a failure or miscarriage: as, to make a balk; you have made a bad balk of it.
5. n. In base-ball, a motion made by the pitcher as if to pitch the ball, but without actually doing so.
6. n. A barrier in one's way; an obstacle or stumbling-block.
7. n. A check or defeat; a disappointment.
8. n. In coal-mining, a more or less sudden thinning out, for a certain distance, of a bed of coal; a nip or want.
9. n. A beam or piece of timber of considerable length and thickness. Specifically— A cross-beam in the roof of a house which unites and supports the rafters; a tie-beam. In old-fashioned one-story houses of Scotland, Ireland, and the North of England these tie-beams were often exposed, and boards or peeled saplings called cabers were laid across them, forming a kind of loft often called the balks. From these exposed tie-beams or from the cabers articles were often suspended. [Prov. Eng. and Scotch.]
10. n. Milit., one of the beams connecting the successive supports of a trestle-bridge or bateau-bridge.
11. n. In carpentry, a squared timber, long or short; a large timber in a frame, floor, etc.; a square log.
12. n. The beam of a balance.
13. n. In billiards, the space between the cushion of the table and the balkline. A ball inside this space is said to be in balk.
14. n. A long wooden or iron table on which paper is laid in the press-room of a printing-office.
15. n. A set of stout stakes surrounded by netting or wickerwork for catching fish.
16. n. The stout rope at the top of fishing-nets by which they are fastened one to another in a fleet.
17. To make a balk or ridge in plowing; make a ridge in by leaving a strip unplowed.
18. Hence To leave untouched generally; omit; pass over; neglect; shun.
19. To place a balk in the way of; hence, to hinder; thwart; frustrate; disappoint.
20. To miss by error or inadvertence.
21. To heap up so as to form a balk or ridge.
22. [Some editors read bak'd in this passage.] Synonyms Foil, Thwart, etc. See frustrate.
23. To stop short in one's course, as at a balk or obstacle: as, the horse balked; he balked in his speech. Spenser.
24. To quibble; bandy words.
25. To signify to fishing-boats the direction taken by the shoals of herrings or pilchards, as seen from heights overlooking the sea: done at first by bawling or shouting, subsequently by signals.
26. n. In wool-manuf., a fullness and suppleness of texture.
27. n. The failure of a jumper or vaulter to jump after taking his run. Three balks usually count as a trial-jump.

Wiktionary

1. v. To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.
2. n. ridge, an unplowed strip of land.
3. n. beam, crossbeam.
4. n. hindrance.
5. n. blunder.
6. n. sports deceptive motion; feint
7. v. archaic to pass over or by.
8. v. to stop, check, block.
9. v. to stop short and refuse to go on.
10. v. to refuse suddenly.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A ridge of land left unplowed between furrows, or at the end of a field; a piece missed by the plow slipping aside.
2. n. A great beam, rafter, or timber; esp., the tie-beam of a house. The loft above was called “the balks.”
3. n. (Mil.) One of the beams connecting the successive supports of a trestle bridge or bateau bridge.
4. n. A hindrance or disappointment; a check.
5. n. A sudden and obstinate stop; a failure.
6. n. (Baseball) A deceptive gesture of the pitcher, as if to deliver the ball. It is illegal and is penalized by allowing the runners on base to advance one base.
7. v. obsolete To leave or make balks in.
8. v. obsolete To leave heaped up; to heap up in piles.
9. v. obsolete To omit, miss, or overlook by chance.
10. v. Obs. or Obsolescent To miss intentionally; to avoid; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk.
11. v. To disappoint; to frustrate; to foil; to baffle; to thwart.
12. v. obsolete To engage in contradiction; to be in opposition.
13. v. To stop abruptly and stand still obstinately; to jib; to stop short; to swerve.
14. v. (Baseball) to commit a balk{6}; -- of a pitcher.
15. v. To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an illegal pitching motion while runners are on base
2. v. refuse to comply
3. n. one of several parallel sloping beams that support a roof
4. n. the area on a billiard table behind the balkline
5. n. something immaterial that interferes with or delays action or progress