Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Snowball

Definition: Snowball

Snowball

Noun

1. Plant having heads of fragrant white trumpet-shaped flowers; grows in sandy arid regions.

2. Ball of ice cream covered with coconut and usually chocolate sauce.

3. Ball of crushed ice with fruit syrup.

4. Snow pressed into a ball for throwing (playfully).

Verb

1. Increase or accumulate at a rapidly accelerating rate.

2. Throw snowballs at.

3. Increase at a rapidly accelerating rate.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "snowball" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1608. (references)


Specialty Definition: Snowball

DomainDefinition

Slang in 1811

SNOWBALL. A jeering appellation for a negro. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Snowball

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The word snowball can mean more than one thing.






Snowball (The Simpsons)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Snowball was the Simpsons' pet cat, replaced by Snowball II after its death. Snowball was, according to Lisa in a poem, run over by a Chrysler. At a later point it was elaborated Snowball was run over by Clovis Quimby, drunkard brother of mayor Quimby (in a parody of what could be any of the Kennedy brothers or even Billy Carter). Snowball was so-named due to her white color. However, she has been drawn black. Snowball has been spotted in heaven by characters who have undergone near-death experiences.

See: Characters

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Snowball."

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Synonym: Snowball

Synonym: sweet sand verbena (n). (additional references)

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Synonyms within Context: Snowball

ContextSynonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).

Assemblage

Accumulation; (store); congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau, tissue, mass, pyramid; bing; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation, cumulation; glomeration, agglomeration; conglobation; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate, coacervation, coagmentation, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum, spicilegium, black hole of Calcutta; quantity; (greatness).

Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Snowball

English words defined with "snowball": Guelderrose'Snowballed, Snowballing. (references)
Specialty definitions using "snowball": wet snow. (references)
Non-English Usage: "Snowball" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses.

German (snowball).

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Modern Usage: Snowball

DomainUsage

Screenplays

We just rolled up a snowball and threw it into Hell. (Mission: Impossible II; writing credit: Bruce Geller; Ronald D. Moore)

Behave yourselves, because Santa can still look into his magic snowball and see just what you're up to. And now that you know all about him, you can be darn sure that come snow or high water, Santa Claus is comin' to town! (Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town; writing credit: Romeo Muller)

Look, my first snowball! I love snow so much, my fingers are numb with joy! (That '70s Show; writing credit: Stacia Raymond)

Movie/TV Titles

The Snowball (1966)

Snowball (1960)

Summer Snowball Fight (1904)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Snowball

DomainTitle

Books

  • Norman's Snowball (Annick Toddler Series) (reference)

  • Robot Man and Friends: The Great Snowball Contest (A Golden Look-Look Book) (reference)

  • Snowball (Step into Reading, Early, paper) (reference)

  • The Big Snowball (All Aboard Reading) (reference)

  • The Snowball Fight (Maurice Sendak's Little Bear) (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Theater & Movies

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Snowball

Photos:
Snowball

More pictures...

Illustrations:
Snowball

More pictures...

Computer Images:
Snowball

More pictures...

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Photo Album: Snowball

ThumbnailDescription & CreditThumbnailDescription & Credit

The snowball Battle near Dalton, Georgia. Credit: Library of Congress.

Children having snowball fight, Chillicothe, Ohio. Credit: Library of Congress.

Halloween and the Minnesota snowball. Credit: Library of Congress.

  

Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Sounds Captioned with "Snowball".

PlayCaption
Building; gain; increasing; snowball; rise; swell; surge; surging; increase; build up; intensify; redouble; .
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Snowball

SubjectTopicQuote

Business

The snowball effect would kick in after 2000 if Poland begins to make more than 1 million cars annually. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Snowball

"Snowball" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 83.93% of the time. "Snowball" is used about 112 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words
Rank in English
Noun (singular)83.93%9433,845
Lexical Verb (infinitive)12.5%1493,893
Noun (proper)3.57%4175,879
                    Total100.00%112N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Name Usage Frequency: Snowball

The following table summarizes the usage of "snowball" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified.
NameUsage/GenderUsage per 100
million Persons
Rank in USA
SnowballLast name40022,621
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Snowball

Expressions using "snowball": snowball bush snowball fight snowball sampling snowball tree. Additional references.

Hyphenated Usage

Beginning with "snowball": snowball-throwing.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Snowball

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

snowball

594

flower snowball

7

snowball fight

133

snowball flavor

7

snowball bush

111

effect snowball

6

snowball game

63

snowball stands

6

snowball cum

58

cake snowball

6

snowball fight game

48

recipe snowball syrup

5

snowball machine

33

fighting game snowball

5

snowball tree

24

lesbian snowball

5

snowball viburnum

18

jody snowball

5

the snowball war

17

calculator snowball

5

earth snowball

16

pattern quilt snowball

5

snowball plant

15

run snowball

5

snowball sex

13

derby snowball

5

snowball syrup

12

operation snowball

5

bukkake snowball

12

bush care snowball

5

shrub snowball

10

snowball teen

5

japanese snowball

9

porn snowball

4

snowball express

9

kiss snowball

4

quilt snowball

8

chinese snowball

4

pic snowball

7

debt snowball

4
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Snowball

Language Translations for "snowball"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Albanian

  

top dëbore, mbledhje parash (gate, gate money). (various references)

   

Arabic 

  

‏كرة ثلجية, ‏الويبرنوم عشب أبيض الزهر, ‏إرتفع (advance, arise, ascend, aspire, climb, come in, flow, hike, lift, lift off, mount, soar, spring, tower, uplift). (various references)

   

Bulgarian 

  

снежна топка, раста бързо, картоп, нещо което расте неимоверно, бия със снежни топки. (various references)

   

Chinese 

  

雪球. (various references)

   

Czech

  

snìhová koule (snow ball). (various references)

   

Danish

  

sneboldsstikprøveudvælgelse (snowball sampling), sneboldknitren (snowball grating). (various references)

   

Dutch

  

sneeuwbal (guelder rose). (various references)

   

Esperanto

  

viburno (guelder rose). (various references)

   

Farsi 

  

گلوله برف بازی , گلوله برف , بسرعت زیادشدن , باگلوله برف زدن . (various references)

   

Finnish

  

lumipallo. (various references)

   

French

  

lancer des boules de neige, boule de neige. (various references)

   

German

  

Schneeball (guelder rose). (various references)

   

Greek 

  

χιονόσφαιρα, χιονόμπαλα. (various references)

   

Hebrew 

  

ללכת ול'"ול, כ"ור של'. (various references)

   

Hungarian

  

hógolyó. (various references)

   

Italian

  

palla di neve. (various references)

   

Japanese Kanji 

  

雪玉 , 雪礫 . (various references)

   

Japanese Katakana 

  

ゆきつぶて, ゆき ま. (various references)

   

Manx

  

ceau bluckan sniaghtee, bluckan sniaghtee. (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

owballsnay

   

Portuguese

  

rosa-de-gueldres (guelder rose), bola de neve (guelder rose). (various references)

   

Russian 

  

снежок. (various references)

   

Serbo-Croatian

  

grudva snega. (various references)

   

Spanish

  

bola de nieve (fall of snow). (various references)

   

Swedish

  

snöboll, kasta snöboll. (various references)

   

Turkish

  

kartopuna tutmak, kartopu oynamak, kartopu çiçeği (guelder rose, viburnum), kartopu, gittikçe artmak, gitgide büyüyen şey, çığ gibi büyümek. (various references)

   

Ukrainian

  

сніжка, гратися в сніжки, закидати сніжками, ліпити сніжки. (various references)

   

Vietnamese 

  

hòn tuyết. (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Snowball

Derivations

Words beginning with "snowball": snowballed, snowballing, snowballs. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Snowball" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Scobell. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Snowball"

# of Phoneme MatchesPronunciationWord(s) rhyming with "snowball" (pronounced snō"bô'l)
3-b ô' lbasketball, blackball, butterball, cannonball, eyeball, fastball, fireball, football, handball, hardball, meatball, mothball, oddball, pinball, racquetball, screwball, softball, spitball, stickball, trackball, volleyball.

Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Snowball

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-b-l-l-n-o-s-w"

-1 letter: ballons.

-2 letters: allows, ballon, llanos, sallow.

-3 letters: allow, awols, balls, bawls, blawn, blaws, blown, blows, bolas, bolls, bowls, lawns, llano, loans, ollas, salol, salon, solan, walls.

-4 letters: abos, albs, alls, alow, also, awls, awns, awol, ball, bals, bans, bawl, blaw, blow, boas, bola, boll, bowl, bows, labs, lawn, laws, loan, lobs, lown, lows, nabs.

 Words containing the letters "a-b-l-l-n-o-s-w"
 

+1 letter: snowballs.

 

+2 letters: snowballed.

 

+3 letters: snowballing.

 

+4 letters: glassblowing.

 

+5 letters: glassblowings.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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Alternative Orthography: Snowball


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

53 6E 6F 77 62 61 6C 6C

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

...    -.    ---    .--.    -...    .-    .-..    .-..

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01010011 01101110 01101111 01110111 01100010 01100001 01101100 01101100

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#83 &#110 &#111 &#119 &#98 &#97 &#108 &#108

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0053 006E 006F 0077 0062 0061 006C 006C

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

5380818968677878

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Crosswords
4. Usage: Modern
5. Usage: Commercial
6. Images: Slideshow
7. Images: Photo Album
8. Sounds
9. Quotations: Non-fiction
10. Usage Frequency
11. Names: Frequency
12. Expressions
13. Expressions: Internet
14. Translations: Modern
15. Derivations
16. Rhymes
17. Anagrams
18. Orthography
19. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.