tarball

T1A1R1B3A1L1L1

noun

A ball of tar or crude oil found on a beach.

Less commonScrabble 9
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Meanings

nountarball (plural tarballs)

plural tarballs

  1. A ball of tar or crude oil found on a beach.

    1969, Hearings By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary All of us who have been to the beaches this year have encountered tarballs that stick to our feet and mess up our rugs.

  2. computingA file that is an archive of several other files, created using the Unix tar utility.
verbtarball (third-person singular simple present tarballs, present participle tarballing, simple past and past participle tarballed)

present singular third person tarballs · participle present tarballing · participle past tarballed · past tarballed

  1. transitivecomputingTo archive into a tarball.

Synonyms & antonyms

Also see
tarfile

Origin

From tar + ball.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

tarball. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tarball

MLA

“tarball.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tarball. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “tarball,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tarball.

Source: tarball on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.