[see prec.]
1. To exclude (a person) from a club or other society by adverse votes, recorded by the placing of black balls in the ballot-box, or in other ways.
1770. Mrs. Delany, Lett., Ser. II. I. 262. The Duchess of Bedford was at first black-balled, but is since admitted.
1826. Disraeli, Viv. Grey, IV. i. 135. I shall make a note to blackball him at the Athenæum.
1880. Besant & Rice, Seamy Side, xi. 83. There are no rules in this club … nobody is ever blackballed, nobody is ever proposed.
2. To exclude from society; to ostracize, taboo.
1840. Macaulay, Clive, Ess. (1854), 534. The Dilettante sneered at their want of taste. The Maccaroni black-balled them [‘nabobs’] as vulgar fellows.
1861. Crt. Life at Naples, I. 89. All foreigners are not to be blackballed.
3. To blacken with black-ball.
1818. Cobbett, Pol. Reg., XXXIII. 92. With big black-balled whiskers under his nose.
Hence Blackballer, Blackballing vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1869. Spectator, 3 July, 779. The blackballer declines to associate with the person blackballed, if he can help it.
1826. Scott, in Lockhart (1839), IX. 43. Here is an ample subject for a little blackballing in the case of Joseph Hume.
1865. Times, 23 Aug., 10/4. The most inexorable blackballing club.
