snowball

UK/ˈsnəʊbɔːl/US/ˈsnoʊbɔl/

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,201 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: snowballs

A snowball is a ball of packed snow, or something growing fast by itself. Throw a snowball, snowball into a crisis, a snowball effect.

The figurative use is the more interesting, since a snowball grows by rolling and so does a rumour or a debt. A snowball's chance in hell means no chance at all.

Definitions of snowball

1nounsnowballA ball of packed snow, or something growing fast by itself.B2
“The children threw snowballs at each other in the school playground.”

snowball is a ball.

Where it comes from

Middle English snoweball is snow plus ball, with cognates across the Germanic languages.

Middle English
snoweball
English, today
snowball

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

snowball in the wild

A snowball is a spherical object made from snow, usually created by scooping snow with the hands and pressing the snow together to compact it into a ball.
Snowball
Snowballs are often used in games such as snowball fights.
Snowball
The common analogy is with the rolling of a snowball down a snow-covered hillside.
Snowball effect
Depending on the region of North America, the terms snowball, ice cone and snow cone may refer to different things.
Snow cone
A snowball fight is a physical game in which balls of snow are thrown with the intention of hitting somebody else.
Snowball fight

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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