on the ball
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Performing well and being in control of a situation
Literally: physically holding a ball
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
We have followed the trail of these people only to find that they have moved house and we can not trace them.
The organisers of Young England RC are printing 500,000 application forms to be issued to schools and rugby clubs.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “on the ball” mean?
Performing well and being in control of a situation Literally: physically holding a ball
Is “on the ball” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.