1805 J. Carr Northern Summer xii. 183 In the naval constitution of Russia there is a regulation which cries aloud for reform; it is balloting for rank, and the right of blackballing.

1826 W. Scott Diary 11 Nov. in J. G. Lockhart Mem. Life Scott (1837) VI. xi. 383 Here is an ample subject for a little blackballing in the case of Joseph Hume.

1907 Daily Chron. 17 Sept. 4/6 Even ‘blackballing’ is no longer necessarily liberal.

1966 H. Davies New London Spy (1967) 193 In more robust days, blackballing..was a real terror and could become a threat to a club's continuance.

2003 Wired May 132/2 Major collusions between studios, arbitrary blackballing, a system that mocks any standard of fair play.

1828 C. White Herbert Milton II. i. 77 It often occurs that candidates are rejected in one month, the caprice of one of these blackballing bourreaux.

1865 Times 23 Aug. 10/5 Individuals [can be] as private here,..as in the closest coterie, and the most inexorable black-balling club.

1935 H. Heslop Last Cage Down i. ix. 83 Those black-balling creatures,..sneaking into the colliery offices..and drawing up terms of defeat and then literally forcing the men to accept.

1983 R. B. Rose Making of Sans-culottes vi. 99 The only restriction on membership was the reserved right to exclude applicants by a blackballing procedure.

2010 Business Week Online (Nexis) 5 Jan. He continued, unsmiling, glaring at me as though I myself had cast the blackballing vote.