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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

Calvinball en · NOUN

Etymology

From Calvin + ball. From a fictional game without rules, played in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) A deliberately absurd sport without fixed rules.
    • They are required to play the game of Nomic, in some form, or alternatively, the games Calvinball or Mao, which are basically the same. 2005, The Grate^([sic]) Book of Moo, Church of MOO, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page ccclvii:
    • Chick Lit, and pretty much all of publishing, plays a lot like Calvinball. There aren’t any rules. 2006, Cathy Yardley, Will Write for Shoes: How to Write a Chick Lit Novel, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 148:
    • The Court’s conservative majority is playing constitutional Calvinball, in which it’s never too late to change the rules. 2021 December 14, Adam Serwer, “The Supreme Court Is Playing Constitutional Calvinball”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 14 Dec 2021:
    • “House rules parcheesi” is distinct from “Calvinball” in that the latter has no set rules, whereas the former seems to have very specific rules, which are never divulged in the strip, under any circumstances. 2006, D. C. Simpson, Prehistrionics: Ozy and Millie, 1997-2000, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 76:
    • 2002 March–April, Bret Rappaport and Joni Green, “Calvinball Cannot Be Played on This Court: The Sanctity of Auction Procedures in Bankruptcy”, Journal of Bankruptcy Law and Practice, volume 11, pages 189–212
    • And every time I would play serious tackle Nerf Calvinball out in the park somewhere, it played over and over in the back of my mind -- what would I do if I broke an arm? 1996 June 17, Wayne Lockwood, "Nobody without health insurance is a slacker or a loser", Knight-Ridder
    • If the limitations of life were like the rules in Calvinball, someone like Nozick might ask if there would be anything left for people to do. 2007, David H. Guston, John Parsi, Justin Tosi, “Anticipating the Ethical and Political Challenges of Human Nanotechnologies”, in Fritz Allhoff, editor, Nanoethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Nanotechnology, →ISBN, page 196:
    • A more unusual sport is calvinball, which involves spontaneous rules that are never the same twice. 2006, Lee Mothes, The New Island Relocation Guide: How to Live on the Island of Possibility, →ISBN, page 50:
    • At first my humans very much disliked it when I played croquet with them.... But eventually they decided to accept my participation, and renamed the game “Calvinball,” after the game of some comic book character 1998, Chris Glaser, Unleashed: The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog, Westminster John Knox Press, →ISBN, page 71: