- 1
To blackball someone is to vote against them so they cannot join a club, a society, or some other closed group. The old picture is quite literal: members dropped a ball into a box to vote, a white ball for “yes” and a black ball for “no.” One black ball could be enough to keep a person out, and nobody had to say their name out loud. That is why the word still smells of quiet rejection, not a public argument. Today people also stretch it: a workplace, a party scene, or a professional circle can blackball someone, meaning they shut that person out on purpose. It can be a noun (a blackball, the rejecting vote) or a verb (they blackballed her). It is more formal and older-fashioned than freeze out or block, and you meet it most in talk about clubs, committees, and old institutions. Though actually, in ordinary modern life the physical balls are mostly gone; the word kept the meaning and dropped the object.
封殺；投反對票擋人入會（字面是「黑球」，來自俱樂部用黑白球投票）
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Blackballname
- 1
A small town in Grey district, West Coast, New Zealand, with a history of gold and coal mining.
blackballnoun/ˈblækbɔːl/
- 1
A rejection; a vote against admitting someone.
- 2
A black ball used to indicate such a negative vote.
- Regardless how many other people may have voted to approve a candidate for membership, a single blackball will reject the candidate.
- 3
A kind of large black sweet, a black-colored gobstopper.
- 4
A substance for blacking shoes, boots, etc. or for taking impressions of engraved work.
- 5
A game, a standardized version of the English version of eight-ball.
blackballverb/ˈblækbɔːl/
- 1
To vote against, especially in an exclusive organization.
- If you're not from a moneyed, well-connected family, you can count on getting blackballed from the fraternity.
- Why, if I had known you all my life I should have grown up in the condition of Adam before the fall, and they would have blackballed me at the clubs.
- 2
To ostracize.
- Henry knew. If he were blackballed by this distaff Mafia, he was doomed: Endless, but always justifiable, delays would occur in the work he wanted typed.
- My father sure could have used a union. The monopoly that controlled the bank vault installation business blackballed him when he was in his late fifties because he'd gone to work for a rival company that immediately went belly-up. If he'd been in a union he'd have got his job back."
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。