SNOWBALL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Snowball

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/snˈoʊbˌɔl/ Listen

noun

Snowball n.

A round mass of snow pressed or roller together, or anything resembling such a mass.

(Bot.) The Guelder-rose.

(Bot.) A shrub of the genus Viburnum, having large clusters of white flowers.

Snowball bush or Snowball tree (Bot.), the Guelder-rose.

a snowball's chance in hell, (Colloq.) no chance; an infinitesimal chance.

verb

Snowball v. t. (past & past part. snowballed; pres. part. snowballing) To pelt with snowballs; to throw snowballs at.

Snowball v. i.

To throw snowballs.

To increase in magnitude at an accelerating rate, achieving large proportions; by analogy with a snowball rolling down a steep hill, causing a large snow slide.

See images of 'Snowball'

Etymology of 'Snowball'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Snowball" Quotes from Famous Books

... faces, and that peculiar thickening of the air which they had noticed had become first a dark blue and then a whitening pall, in which the bear was lost. They still kept on. Suddenly Julian felt himself struck between the eyes by what seemed a snowball, and his companions were as quickly spattered by gouts of monstrous clinging snowflakes. Others as quickly followed—it was not snowing, it was snowballing. They at first laughed, affecting to retaliate ...

— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... pile of [snowballs] to throw at the snowman. Just as Bob threw one, Jimmy Crow lit on the shoulder of the [snowman], and the [snowball] knocked him off into a deep drift! [Jimmy Crow] was not hurt, but he was angry. He flew at [Bob], and carried off his [cap] in his [beak], and dropped it into that same deep [snowdrift]. Then [Bob] had to wade through ...

— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster

... with an uncle and aunt. Again these fellows were blue-eyed and drab, and, as such, were decent and reasonable, while he was brown-eyed and preposterously fair-haired. To be sure, it was only his oval face that saved him from the horrible indignity of being called "Snowball." ...

— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry had beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of her life. I give it as one instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought another; until my poor patron was so perished in reputation that he began to keep the house like my lord. All this while, you may be very sure, he uttered no complaints at home; the very ground of the scandal was too sore a matter ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... again begets prosperity, so also does misery grow like a snowball rolling down hill. The great, tremendous, busy world about me rushed restlessly onward in the fog - striving, seeking, building up and demolishing, urged on by uncomprehended impulses - and considered we no more than any of the thousand lost creatures that are crushed under ...

— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

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