blackball

Even a popular New York City venue allegedly uses it to blackball people its millionaire owner considers adversaries.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 28, 2026

Ms McKinney said modelling opportunities began to decline for her and she believed Mr Combs used his influence to "blackball" her in the industry.

From BBC ● May 22, 2024

Regarding the charge from many of his accusers that he threatened to derail their careers if they spoke out: “I couldn’t blackball anybody, because if I said, ‘Don’t use that actress’ .

From Washington Post ● Mar. 11, 2020

When she finally gave in, she insisted that I give her four weeks notice or she would blackball me.

From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2020

Early in his career Owen used his influence at the Zoological Society to blackball a young man named Robert Grant whose only crime was to have shown promise as a fellow anatomist.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

While that blackballs the firms, it does not ban all business dealings, the report added.

From Reuters ● Mar. 25, 2022

I buy licorice whips, jelly beans, many-layered blackballs with the seed in the middle, packages of fizzy sherbet you suck up through a straw.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

Julius Cæsar Conway;—a great friend of mine, and therefore he always blackballs my other friends at the club.

From Phineas Finn The Irish Member by Anthony Trollope

And the longer they have gone before the more likely he is to receive no blackballs.

From The Country House by John Galsworthy

Of all candidates at a club a known quarreller is more sure of blackballs now than even in the times when such a one provoked duels.

From Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

That will make it possible to identify potential vetoes but not which country blackballed any given candidate.

From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026

Second, unlike Kennan’s memo, Merry’s was at odds with U.S. policy and was ignored, then buried, and its author was blackballed, by the policymakers at the time.

From Slate ● Dec. 23, 2024

“I’d been counted out and blackballed, and now it’s happening just like I told y’all,” Peysoh said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2024

Afterward he was blackballed in the industry, and invested most of his settlement in a producing a play he wrote that flopped.

From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2023

If he’s not careful, he’ll be blackballed by his state medical association and kept out of the hospitals.”

From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

And the reason for that compulsive work ethic was her unofficial blackballing by “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson, for the crime of accepting Fox's offer to host her own talk show.

From Salon ● May 14, 2025

Mr. Krikorian says he’s been facing that sort of ideological blackballing for years.

From Washington Times ● May 30, 2022

He won a multimillion-dollar settlement in 2019 after he accused the league of blackballing him because of his protests.

From New York Times ● Sep. 13, 2020

Supporters say team owners are blackballing him, and a group rallies outside NFL headquarters in Manhattan.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 6, 2020

The blackballing was Bagenal Daly's doing—" "So I heard," interrupted the other; "they told me that; and here, look here, here's Daly's bond for four thousand six hundred.

From The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. I (of II) by Charles James Lever