snowball

CEFRB1

/ˈsnəʊbɔːl/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A ball made by pressing snow together.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A cocktail made from lemonade and advocaat.

Examples

  • A small snowball is capable of starting an avalanche.

  • The children were rolling a big snowball.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
2

Also pronounced

  • /ˈsnoʊbɔl/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Something that snowballs (grows rapidly out of control).

  2. A ball of snow, usually one made in the hand and thrown for amusement in a snowball fight; also a larger ball of snow made by rolling a snowball around in snow that sticks to it and increases its diameter.

  3. A sex act involving passing ejaculated semen from one person's mouth to another's.

More examples

In context

  • We had a snowball fight.

  • It didn't take long to eat a packetful of snowballs — they are simply delicious.

  • The high unemployment rates quickly snowballed into a major budget problem for the government.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

He packed snow tightly into a round shape to make a blank for the fight.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English snoweball, snoweballe, snaweballe, snayballe, equivalent to snow + ball. Cognate with Scots snawbaw, German Schneeball, Luxembourgish Schnéiball, Dutch sneeuwbal, Afrikaans sneeubal, Limburgish snieëbal, West Frisian sniebal, Saterland Frisian Sneebaal, Sneebal, Swedish snöboll, Elfdalian sniųoboll, Danish snebold, Norwegian Bokmål snøball, Norwegian Nynorsk snøball and Icelandic snjóbolti.