balk

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• intransitive verb To stop short and refuse to go on.
• intransitive verb To refuse obstinately or abruptly.
• intransitive verb Sports To make an incomplete or misleading motion.
• intransitive verb Baseball To make an illegal motion before pitching, allowing one or more base runners to advance one base.
• intransitive verb To check or thwart by or as if by an obstacle.
• intransitive verb Archaic To let go by; miss.
• noun A hindrance, check, or defeat.
• noun Sports An incomplete or misleading motion, especially an illegal move made by a baseball pitcher.
• noun Games One of the spaces between the cushion and the balk line on a billiard table.
• noun An unplowed strip of land.
• noun A ridge between furrows.
• noun A wooden beam or rafter.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To make a balk or ridge in plowing; make a ridge in by leaving a strip unplowed.
• Hence To leave untouched generally; omit; pass over; neglect; shun.
• To place a balk in the way of; hence, to hinder; thwart; frustrate; disappoint.
• To miss by error or inadvertence.
• To heap up so as to form a balk or ridge.
• [Some editors read bak'd in this passage.] Synonyms
• To stop short in one's course, as at a balk or obstacle: as, the horse balked; he balked in his speech. Spenser.
• To quibble; bandy words.
• To signify to fishing-boats the direction taken by the shoals of herrings or pilchards, as seen from heights overlooking the sea: done at first by bawling or shouting, subsequently by signals.
• noun A ridge; especially, a ridge left unplowed in the body of a field, or between fields; an uncultivated strip of land serving as a boundary, often between pieces of ground held by different tenants.
• noun A piece missed in plowing.
• noun An omission; an exception.
• noun A blunder; a failure or miscarriage: as, to make a balk; you have made a bad balk of it.
• noun In base-ball, a motion made by the pitcher as if to pitch the ball, but without actually doing so.
• noun A barrier in one's way; an obstacle or stumbling-block.
• noun A check or defeat; a disappointment.
• noun In coal-mining, a more or less sudden thinning out, for a certain distance, of a bed of coal; a nip or want.
• noun A beam or piece of timber of considerable length and thickness.
• noun Milit., one of the beams connecting the successive supports of a trestle-bridge or bateau-bridge.
• noun In carpentry, a squared timber, long or short; a large timber in a frame, floor, etc.; a square log.
• noun The beam of a balance.
• noun In billiards, the space between the cushion of the table and the balkline. A ball inside this space is said to be in balk.
• noun A long wooden or iron table on which paper is laid in the press-room of a printing-office.
• noun A set of stout stakes surrounded by netting or wickerwork for catching fish.
• noun The stout rope at the top of fishing-nets by which they are fastened one to another in a fleet.
• noun In wool-manuf., a fullness and suppleness of texture.
• noun The failure of a jumper or vaulter to jump after taking his run. Three balks usually count as a trial-jump.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A ridge of land left unplowed between furrows, or at the end of a field; a piece missed by the plow slipping aside.
• noun A great beam, rafter, or timber; esp., the tie-beam of a house. The loft above was called “the balks.”
• noun (Mil.) One of the beams connecting the successive supports of a trestle bridge or bateau bridge.
• noun A hindrance or disappointment; a check.
• noun A sudden and obstinate stop; a failure.
• noun (Baseball) A deceptive gesture of the pitcher, as if to deliver the ball. It is illegal and is penalized by allowing the runners on base to advance one base.
• noun (Billiards) a line across a billiard table near one end, marking a limit within which the cue balls are placed in beginning a game; also, a line around the table, parallel to the sides, used in playing a particular game, called the balk line game.
• intransitive verb To indicate to fishermen, by shouts or signals from shore, the direction taken by the shoals of herring.