[Ads-l] Antedatings of "screwball"

Stanton McCandlish smccandlish at GMAIL.COM
Fri Aug 12 23:48:38 UTC 2022


Another possible reinforcement would be from pool (billiards).  In British
and Irish usage, a screw shot is what North Americans call a draw shot
(shoot the cue ball below center and with long follow-through, to impart a
lot of back-spin to it, so that it moves backwards after contact with the
object ball absorbs the forward momentum).  It's not ball behavior that a
non-player or a novice would expect to see or know how to do.

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