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Snowball   /snˈoʊbˌɔl/   Listen
Snowball

verb
(past & past part. snowballed; pres. part. snowballing)
1.
Increase or accumulate at a rapidly accelerating rate.
2.
Throw snowballs at.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Snowball" Quotes from Famous Books



... interrupted Mrs. Cameron. "Do not leave out the element of time. Remember that the farther away we get from the beginning of learning, the greater accumulation there is for us to master. Like a mammoth snowball, each century has rolled up its treasure until such a mass has come down to us that it is practically impossible for us to possess ourselves of it. Sometimes when I think of all there is to ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... too altruistic ever to come in our lifetime; but, do you know, I am awfully optimistic about it. I really believe it will come so quickly, after it once gets a good start, that it will astound us. The proverbial snowball coming down the mountain side will be as nothing to it. Everyone will want to join the procession at once. No one will want to be left out for the finger of Scorn to accuse. And, strangely enough, I believe it will ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... said, turning to the camp commander, "a crook ain't got any more chance than a snowball in—you know—when he tries to pull the wool over my eyes. I've been ketchin' thieves and bandits an' the Lord knows what-all for forty years er more, an' so forth. I want to thank you, sir, an' your brave soldier boys—an' the United States ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... a hum of voices, a brilliant throng of exquisitely gowned, bejeweled women and well-groomed men, in fact a house such as Wood's leading lady had never before confronted! A chance for triumph or for disaster—and triumph it was! Like a rolling snowball, it grew as the play advanced. Again and again Clara Morris took a curtain call with the other actresses. Finally the stage manager said to Mr. Daly, "They want her," and Mr. Daly answered, sharply: "I know what they want, and I know what I ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... mittened and shawled that the frost scarcely got a chance at the tip of my nose. I never skated or coasted or built snow houses. If I had any experience of snowballs, it was with those thrown at me by the Gentile boys. The way I dodge a snowball to this day makes me certain that I learned the act in my fearful childhood days, when I learned so many cowardly tricks of bending to a blow. I know that I was proud of myself when, not many years ago, I found I was not afraid to stand up and catch a flying baseball; but the fear ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... exhausted the patience of her friends on behalf of her particular tame widow, she can always begin afresh with a poverty-stricken refugee, and if the delights of the ordinary subscription-card should ever pall, she can fly for relaxation to the seductive method of the snowball, which conceals under a cloak of geometrical progression and accuracy, the most comprehensive uncertainty in its results. One painful incident in her career must be chronicled. Fired by her example, but without her knowledge, a friend of hers from whom she is accustomed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various

... not be a stone. Perhaps, after all, it may be a bouquet, or a snowball, or a firework, or a Free Trade Loaf; perhaps they will ask for a stone and I shall give them bread. But it is essential that they should be within reach: how can I love my neighbour as myself if he gets out of range for snowballs? There should be no institution out of the reach of an indignant ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... of two hours later, the Lancet shifted back to normal space drive, and the cold yellow sun of the Moruan system swam into sight in the viewscreen. Far below, the tiny eighth planet glistened like a snowball in the reflection of the sun, with only occasional rents in the cloud blanket revealing the ragged surface below. The doctors watched as the ship went into descending orbit, skimming the outer atmosphere and settling into ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... thyme, raised her eyes and looked after the child, all in a gentle wonder. Then she went slowly up and down the box-bordered walks, the full skirt of her "old lady's gown" trailing stiffly over the white gravel, her delicate face rising against the blossomless shrubs of snowball and bridal-wreath, like a faintly tinted flower that had been blighted before it fully bloomed. Around her the garden was fragrant as a rose-jar with the lid left off, and the very paths beneath were red and white with fallen petals. Hardy cabbage ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... his son. They both looked upon the march of the King of Sweden into the heart of Germany as the fool-hardy act of a mad adventurer. The courtiers ridiculed his transient conquests, saying, "Gustavus Adolphus is a king of snow. Like a snowball he will melt in a southern clime." Wallenstein was particularly contemptuous. "I will whip him back to his country," said he, "like a truant school-boy, with rods." Ferdinand was for a time deceived by these representations, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... efforts. Johnny meanwhile, who was as hard as nails, no sooner recovered from a thumping than he renewed and redoubled his loud contempt for a great lout over six feet high, who had never drawn a sword or pulled a trigger. And now for the winter this book would be a perpetual snowball for him to pelt his big brother with, and yet (like a critic) be scarcely fair object for a hiding. In season out of season, upstairs down-stairs, even in the breakfast and the dinner chambers, this young imp poked clumsy splinters—worse than thorns, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... but an hour since I thought the heath would have been our couch, and a snowball our pillow; we shall be ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... even dare mention his desire for that young bronze beauty until he had brought in five or six heads. After that he had some standing in the lady's sight. Without the heads he had no more chance of winning either the girl herself or her pa or ma or any of the Dyak family than the proverbial snowball has of getting through Borneo without melting. It just simply couldn't be done according to ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... and Joel, staring as hard as he could, saw two boys pop up from behind a stone wall, and come rushing down toward him, each with a large snowball in his hand. And the next thing, the snowballs flew through the air, and one hit David in the neck, and burst all over his tippet. Joel didn't care that the other one gave him a ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... Blue, Wisdom Salvia, Red, Energy Saxifrage, Mossy, Affection Scabious, Unfortunate Love Scabious, Sweet, Widowhood Scarlet Lychnis, Brilliant Eye Shinus, Religious Enthusiasm Sensitive Plant, Sensitiveness Senvy, Indifference Shamrock, Light-heartedness Snakesfoot, Horror Snapdragon, "No." Snowball, Bound Snowdrop, Hope Sorrel, Wild, Wit Ill-timed Sorrel, Wood, Joy Sothernwood, Jest, Bantering Spearmint, Warm, Sentiment Speedwell, Female Fidelity Speedwell, Spiked, Semblance Spider, Ophrys, Adroitness Spiderwort, Esteem, not Love Star of Bethehem, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... Gathering their skirts from the grass that glittered with the drops of the last shower, arm in arm the two women walked down the broad central gravel drive between ribbon beds of flowers. From here numerous paths paved with white stone went wandering under snowball trees and wild apple, losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made a clear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden, where in the midst a round pool of water lay like a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among the bushes red and rose and white, the elder woman in her black, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... a foot," persisted Sam. "Well, when Snowball sees Muster Crockydile so near as there was no getting out of the way, he says—'You jist wait a bit, Massa Crock, I'll gib yar suffin to sniff at.' An' so, without more ado, he unscrews one of his wooden legs, and ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... pressing the picture to his lips, "how can I part with you?" And dropping his head on the hard, prickly cushion, by which he knelt, he cried in a way that would considerably have astonished the youths with whom he had, a few hours earlier, engaged in a vigorous snowball fight. They only knew a bright, mirthful Aubrey Clare, the cleverest lad in his class, and the "jolliest fellow out;" none but Kate had any idea of the deepest affections of his boyish heart, and she truly sympathised ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... soberly, with room for other thoughts; to the most it came as a tumultuous passion, an irrational joy, a dazzling bandage to their eyes, beneath which they saw, with an inner vision, wealth a growing snowball and victory their familiar spirit. Among the adventurers from the Cygnet there was, moreover, an intoxication of feeling for the man who had led them in that desperate battle, whose subtle gift it was to strike fire from every soul whose circle touched ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... last twenty miles of the river his guides had strained a point now and then, just to see their passenger gasp. They would never have another chance and it was rare sport, just as it is rare sport for spirited youths to snowball a passer-by who does not ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... and wrinkles of the latter filled up with malice for the time; the old men armed with prongs, pitch-forks, clubs, and catsticks; the old women with mops, brooms, fire-shovels, tongs, and pokers; and the younger fry with dirt, stones, and brickbats, gathering as they ran like a snowball, in pursuit of the wind-outstripping prowler; all the mongrel curs of the circumjacencies yelp, yelp, yelp, at their heels, completing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... of gladness, that the day's work is done at last. It is senseless brutality to whip such a dog, and most of our dogs were of that mettle, though Nanook was the strongest and most faithful of the bunch. One's heart goes out to them with gratitude and love—old "Lingo," "Nig," "Snowball," "Wolf," and "Doc"—as one realises what loyal, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Uncle Peter! I certainly did need you to come along right now and set me straight. You founded the fortune, pa trebled it, and now I'll get to work and roll it up like a big snowball." ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... was called "fox and geese," but that's all I can remember about it. If there was a little more snow you tried to wash the girls' faces in it, and sometimes got yours washed. If there was a good deal of wet snow you had a snowball fight, which is great fun, unless you get one right smack dab in your ear—oh, but I can't begin to tell you all the fun there is at the noon hour in the country school, that the town children don't know anything about. And ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... quite go so far as that," he protested. "You see, the world is governed by great natural laws. As a snowball grows larger with rolling, so it takes up more room. As a child grows out of its infant clothes, it needs the vestments of a youth and then a man. And so with Germany. She grew and grew until the country ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... all their energies in their lungs, so that up and down the street the one cry shrilled increasingly: "Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Mister, why don't you git a hoss?" But the mahout in charge, sitting solitary on the front seat, was unconcerned—he laughed, and now and then ducked a snowball without losing any of his good-nature. It was Mr. Eugene Morgan who exhibited so cheerful a countenance between the forward visor of a deer-stalker cap and the collar of a fuzzy gray ulster. "Git a hoss!" the children shrieked, and gruffer ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... The average man is not to be blamed if he fails to see through her smiles and Sunday humor. Now, I was forty when I married the second time, and forty-five the last whirl. Looks like I'd a-had some little sense, now, don't it? But I didn't. No, I didn't have any more show than a snowball in—Sis, hadn't you better retire. You're not interested in my talk to these boys.—Well, if ever any of you want to get married you have my consent. But you'd better get my opinion on her dimples when you do. Now, with my sixty odd years, I'm worth listening ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... Dabney had been fertilizing in the late afternoon, he bent feebly and began to dig the food into their roots. As he swung the long handle, each blow upon the soft earth became more decided. I crept down behind the old snowball bush to be nearer him; I didn't dare go to him in his fight, because I had in my selfish heedlessness brought it all on, but in a little while he was not alone, for a bent old figure with grizzled white wool sticking out from under a red flannel nightcap came quietly along the path with ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... are shot through with golden light, with tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree,— POSITIVE or STAINED blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as unlike in their mode of being to the others as an orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match with her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... RIVALS Or, Fun and Sport Afloat and Ashore It is a lively, rattling, breezy story of school life in this country, written by one who knows all about its ways, its snowball fights, its baseball matches, its pleasures and its perplexities, its glorious excitements, its rivalries, and its chilling disappointments. It is a capitally written story ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.

... to descend as a snowball rolls down hill, and both of us could see that an abyss lay at the foot of the hill; but how were we to hold back, and what measures could we take? And it was utterly impossible to conceal this; my entire ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... quite suddenly, she had hit upon the idea of "Snowball" Saunders. Snowball had come to the house to borrow the Merriams' ice-cream freezer. There was to be an informal "repast" at the Shriners' hall, and Snowball engineered all the Shriners' gustatory festivities from "repasts" to "banquets." ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... flights he darkened the blue with his satyr-like brutalities. But in the gay middle period his pages overflow with decorative Cupids and tiny devils, joyful girls, dainty amourettes, and Parisian putti—they blithely kick their legs over the edges of eternity, and smile as if life were a snowball jest or a game at forfeits. They are adorable. His women are usually strong-backed, robust Amazons, drawn with a swirling line and a Rubens-like fulness. They are conquerors. Before these ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the American. "My two friends, Johnson and Jones, were once having an argument. There were eight or nine inches of snow on the ground. The argument got heated, and Johnson picked up a snowball and threw it at Jones from a distance of not more than five yards. During the transit of that snowball, believe me or not, as you like, the weather changed and became hot and summer like, and Jones, instead of being hit with a snowball, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... so steep that your pony has to do more or less expert ankle work to keep from slipping off sideways. During the passage of that rock you are apt to sit very light. Now cover it with several inches of snow, stick a snowball on each hoof of your mount, and try again. When you have ridden it—or its duplicate—a few score of times, select a steep mountain side, cover it with round rocks the size of your head, and over that spread ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... through barbarous nations, over great rivers and mountains that were thought unpassable, Hannibal had lost a great part of his army, this Hasdrubal, in the same places, had multiplied his numbers, and gathering the people that he found in the way, descended from the Alps like a rolling snowball, far greater than he came over the Pyrenees at his first setting out of Spain. These considerations and the like, of which fear presented many unto them, caused the people of Rome to wait upon their consuls out of the town, like a pensive train of mourners, thinking upon Marcellus and Crispinus, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... at Edinburgh University, and as a budding engineer, he has chronicled; he took part in snowball rows, in the debates of the Speculative Society, and in private dramatic performances, organized by his senior and friend, Professor Fleeming Jenkin. To "dress up" in old costumes always pleased him. He happened to praise the acting of a girl ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... time that I have my cheeks filled out with paraffin, which I believe cakes and gives the appearance of youth. But Mrs. Ostermaier knew a woman who had done so, and being hit on one side by a snowball, the padding broke in half, one part moving up under her eye and the second lodging at the angle of her jaw. She tried lying on a hot-water bottle to melt the pieces and bring them together again, but they did not ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... politics had crushed out the best elements of political life, and to be independent of either party gave a candidate, as an agent told Judge Lindsay when he was contesting the governorship of Colorado, "as much chance as a snowball would have in hell." So that reformers everywhere were eager to hear of a system of voting that would free the electors from the tyranny of parties, and at the same time render a candidate independent of the votes of heckling minorities, and dependent only on ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... experts are busy the divisional inspector and his men are no less so. They are making a kind of gigantic snowball enquiry, working backwards from the persons immediately available. A. has little to say himself, but there are B. and C. who, he knows, were connected with the murdered person. And B. and C. having been questioned speak of ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... Sometimes the coffee would come to the table a thin, amber fluid that tasted like particularly bad consomme. Again it would be served with all the thickness of a puree. Her bread was similarly variable in its undesirability. There were biscuits that held all the flaky charm of a snowball. There were loaves of bread that reminded one of the stories of hardtack in Cuba during the late unpleasantness. There were English muffins that rested upon poor Brinley's digestion as the world may fairly be presumed to rest upon the shoulders of Atlas, and, indeed, it is a tradition in the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... inciter of feuds there was something almost Balkan or Moroccan about Ulysses Budlong Junior. Nearly every day he had come charging into the house with bad news in some form or other. Some rock or snowball he had cast with the most innocent of intentions had gone through a window or a milk wagon or somebody's silk hat. Or he had pulled a small girl's hair, or taken the skates away from a helpless urchin. He had bad luck too in picking ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes

... days the two hostile forces were called North-Enders and South-Enders. In 1850 the North-Enders still survived as a legend, but in practice it was a battle of the Latin School against all comers, and the Latin School, for snowball, included all the boys of the West End. Whenever, on a half-holiday, the weather was soft enough to soften the snow, the Common was apt to be the scene of a fight, which began in daylight with the Latin School in force, rushing their opponents down ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... meeting of the local branch of the Painters' Society, of which Owen was the secretary, and as the snow continued to fall, he occupied himself after dinner in the manner his wife suggested, until four o'clock, when Frankie returned from school bringing with him a large snowball, and crying out as a piece of good news that the snow was still falling heavily, and that he believed it ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... self-assertive impulse of an individual player is too strongly aroused, he spoils the game, just as an angry player spoils a friendly wrestling match or snowball fight, and just as a thoroughly frightened passenger spoils a trip down the rapids, which was meant to be simply thrilling. The instincts are active in play, but they must not be too active, for human ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... an hour was allowed for getting ready, and most of that time was consumed in making snowballs and in fortifying the edge of the woods by throwing up a snowbank. Then a bugle belonging to one of the students sounded out, and the great snowball battle began. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... merry uproar of all their voices! What care they for the ferule and birch rod now? Were boys created merely to study Latin and arithmetic? No; the better purposes of their being are to sport, to leap, to run, to shout, to slide upon the ice, to snowball. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of scandals in 1897 was as the rolling snowball. It is unnecessary to refer to them all in detail. The Union Ground, one of the public squares of Johannesburg, was granted to a syndicate of private individuals upon such terms that they were enabled to sell ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... three days there has been snow, and Archie and Quentin and their cousin, cunning little Sheffield Cowles, and their other cousin, Mr. John Elliott's little girl, Helena, who is a perfect little dear, have been having all kinds of romps in the snow—coasting, having snowball fights, and doing everything—in the grounds back of the White House. This coming Saturday afternoon I have agreed to have a great play of hide-and-go-seek in the White House itself, not only with these children but with their ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... time to notice any more of these innumerable doors, I heard a voice bidding me by name to be dissolved, and at the word I felt myself beginning to melt like a snowball in the heat of the sun; then my master gave me a sleeping draught, so that I slumbered; and when I awoke, he had taken me by some road or other far away on the other side of the castle. I perceived myself in a pitch-dark vale of infinite radius, methought, and shortly, I saw by a few bluish lights, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... what not, the dog never seemed to pay much attention to him. But the minute Bill started aloft that dog began to cry—whine and bark—and try to climb the shrouds after that nigger. Land sakes, you never in your life saw such actions! Got so we had to chain the dog Snowball whenever it came on to blow, for there's a consarned lot o' reefin' down and hoistin' sail on one o' them big fo'masters. The skipper't keeps his job on a ship like the Sally S. Stern must get steamboat speed out ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... disintegrating," pursued Abner stolidly. "By their own bulk—like a big snowball. And by their own badness. People are rolling back to the country—the country they came from. Improved transportation will do it." The troubles of the town were ephemeral—he waved them aside. But his face was set in a frown—doubtless at the thought ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... are going off into the woods," said Mr. Bushy, who had issued from his hole and was sitting up on a convenient crotch. "And I declare!" he said, in amazed tones, "they haven't thrown one snowball at me. Something must be badly wrong with them. Wonder what it is? ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... That legal Latin maxim, "Let the buyer beware," is a legal fiction. It should read, "Let the seller beware," for he who is intent on selling the people a different article from what they want, or at a price beyond its value, will stay in trade about as long as that famous snowball ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... comfortable. If I might be so bold as to criticise what you, my Elder Brother, may be responsible for, I'd suggest that the place to sleep on might be made a shade softer.—Yes, we are becoming effeminate, I know—we were becoming so alas, as far back as "the 45," when The M'Lean found his son with a snowball for a pillow; still, we must go with the times, and even if the berths must be hard, at least let them be level. Please note, all soldier men who run railways in India, and receive my blessing ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... a moment of breathless waiting. Then they bawled, "Second district!" In a flash the company of indolent and cynical young men had vanished like a snowball disrupted by dynamite. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... satire, but not to receiving it. And, receiving this snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to do with it; whether to pretend that he had received nothing, or to call a policeman. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... Reff Ritter, as a snowball took him in the neck. "Who threw that?" he demanded; but nobody answered him. "I believe it was you, Ditmore!" he went on, turning an ugly ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... a case of a snowball growing bigger the farther it rolls, I can't account for it," said he. "This thing ought to have died down long ago. It's been fomented very skilfully. Such a campaign as this one against us takes both ability and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an occasional showy shrub, such as the hydrangea, or the common snowball, or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a clump of geraniums blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which were carefully buried in the soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of being ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... boy who never threw A stone at someone's cat, Or never hurled a snowball swift At someone's high silk hat— Who never ran away from school, To seek the swimming hole, Or slyly from a neighbor's yard Green ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... found the black cook, "Snowball," in the hands of the captain and mate, who were beating him with thick ropes, and causing him to "sing out" at the top of his voice. Both were excited and angry—swearing loudly as they struck the blows—and already the man's ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... As a snowball rolling down a hill of damp snow swells to gigantic proportions, so Cynthia's five hundred dollars descended the long slopes of nineteen-seven, doubling itself at almost every turn. And when, at last, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... off, or very mediaeval, but it was really lots of fun, or far more fun than one would have thought. The storming of the castle was very sincere, and the fortress was honestly defended. Miss Macroyd was made umpire, as she wished, and provided with a large snowball to sit on at a safe distance; as she was chosen by the men, the girls wanted to have an umpire of their own, who would be really fair, and they voted Verrian into the office. But he refused, partly because he did not care about being paired off with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... weeds and trees, and several plants noted somewhat in detail yet unlike any form known to me. Of the recognizable plants a number were used somewhat cleverly for their analogical significance. Of these may be mentioned the snowball and hydrangea whose flowers as every botanist knows are sterile, the size of the individual blossom being gained at the expense of loss of stamens and pistils. These plants were plainly used to indicate ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... ought to congratulate a young man of twenty-two as to a successful termination of his school-lessons. He himself at that age had been, if not on 'Change, at any rate seated on the steps of 'Change. He had been then doing a man's work; beginning to harden together the nucleus of that snowball of money which he had since rolled onwards till it had become so huge a lump—destined, probably, to be thawed and to run away into muddy water in some much shorter space of time. He could not blame ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... to him, crowing, with little springs. They had formed an acquaintance during the delay in the Rockies, which had grown to intimacy in the Cascades, and Hollis slipped the carrying strap of his bag over his shoulder and stopped to toss him a snowball, before he turned from the track. "Good-by, Joey," he said. "I am coming back for you ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... earned my schooling by making the fires and sweeping the schoolroom, and here I learned some Latin and the higher rules in arithmetic by rote, always with the reputation of a stupid boy, good in the snowball fights of the intermission, when we had two snow forts to capture and defend; in running foot-races, the speediest, and in backhand wrestling, the strongest, but mentally hopeless. All this period ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... prosperity 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 its ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... is played with one small ball, in size anywhere from that of a golf to a tennis ball. If played in the snow, a hard frozen snowball may be used, or ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... laughing retort. "Still, with each successive generation rolling up its accumulation of knowledge the intellectual snowball is getting to be of ponderous size. History's remedy for this malady has always been to knock the whole structure to pieces every now and then and begin again. Perhaps we shall have to have another ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... into the farmyard, clucking and scratching busily; for all were hungry, and ran chirping round her to pick up the worms and seeds she found for them. Cocky soon began to help take care of his sisters; and when a nice corn or a fat bug was found, he would step back and let little Downy or Snowball have it. But Peck would run and push them away, and gobble up the food greedily. He chased them away from the pan where the meal was, and picked the down off their necks if they tried to get their share. His mother scolded him when the little ones ran to hide under her ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... Moon's a snowball. See the drifts Of white that cross the sphere. The Moon's a snowball, melted down ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... walked down King Street, and saw the sentinel at the Custom House loading his gun. Robert learned that a boy had hurled a snowball ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... 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 with these whirling, flying masses shaken like clinging feathers from a pillow; but in a ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... the night the first baby blue fox said to the second, "Who are the snow ghosts the ghosts of?" The second baby blue fox answered, "Everybody who makes a snowball, a snow man, a snow fox or a snow fish or a snow pattycake, ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg

... picked up the last snowball. He took good aim for it was the last of their ammunition. Then he let it fly. It hit the Tall Enemy Man ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... streets, was met by Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, who was accompanied by some lady friends and Mr. Brace, and at another point by Mr. Whalley, the chairman of the company. These arrivals were acknowledged with vociferous cheering. The procession, like a rolling snowball, gained bulk as it proceeded, and before it reached the station, comprehended a very large proportion of the inhabitants,—ladies and gentlemen,—with a good sprinkling of their neighbours. At the station there was a considerable delay, awaiting the arrival of the train from Newtown. At last ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... intervals, along this walk, some bushes of lilacs, bridal-wreath spirea, flowering almond, snowball, syringa, and scarlet flowering quince; for roses, Mme. Plantier, the half double Boursault, and some great clumps of the little cinnamon rose and Harrison's yellow brier, whose flat opening flowers are things of a day, these two varieties having the habit ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... did look in one day to ask if they'd like some sweetpeas, but I found the Ethels were ahead of me. The old lady has a fine snowball bush and a beauty syringa in front of the house. When I spoke about them she said she had always wanted to have a bed of white flowers around the two bushes, so I offered to make ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... nakedness by pooling their rags, were a musical rabble. Kevin MacHenery, carrying a saber captured from one of the BSG-OCS-men, shouted to a tuba-player, the bell of whose horn had been dimpled by a hard-cored snowball. "Play the National Anthem," he yelled. The player, chilly and terrified, raised the mouthpiece of the tuba to his lips and, looking fearfully about like the target of a test-your-skill ball-throwing game, puffed out the sonorous opening notes. One ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... so indeed; only where was home? that puzzled her. However, she trotted along by the side of her companion, and presently came to what might have been an enormous snowball, but there was a hole in it. Yes, it was hollow; and as her companion made for the opening, she saw more little stout figures rolled up in furs inside. Then she perceived that it was a house built up of blocks ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... forget. When you start out to the point of forgetfulness, you must keep it up; regret comes back threefold with soberness. It seems silly and weak for a man who has been buffeted as I have, who is supposed to gather wisdom and philosophy as a snowball gathers snow as it rolls down hill, to try to drown regret and disappointment in liquor. A man never knows how weak he is till he meets the one woman and she ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... and happy face; and found me trimming a grape-vine in our back garden, near the palings that separated our ground from Mr. Faringfield's. On the Faringfield side of the fence, at this place, grew bushes of snowball and rose. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... lottery of somewhat shabby prizes—we should strike a death-blow at the constrained and unnatural attitude of our Society. At present we are not a united body, but a loose gathering of individuals, whose inherent attraction is allowed to condense them into little knots and coteries. Our last snowball riot read us a plain lesson on our condition. There was no party spirit—no unity of interests. A few, who were mischievously inclined, marched off to the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file; but even before they reached their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in many, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the water I could not discern anything that would bear us up, but I noticed that my leading dog was wallowing about near a piece of snow, packed and frozen together like a huge snowball, some twenty-five yards away. Upon this he had managed to scramble. He shook the ice and water from his shaggy coat and turned around to look for me. Perched up there out of the frigid water he seemed to think the situation the most natural in the world, and the weird black marking of his ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... 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

... a 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 snow over his [boots], to get his cap again. And Jimmy Crow ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster

... Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in that same Wonder-Book of Malte-Brun, edited by Pietro il Parlatore, we recall a sketch of a boy running for life down a slope of at least 45 deg., just before a snowball some five hundred times as big as the one our school-boys unitedly rolled up in the back-yard. It was a snowball, round, symmetrical, just such a magnified copy of the backyard one as might be expected to follow a boy in dreams after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... bicolours. The florets in many kinds are exceedingly pretty, from the way in which they are tipped and shaded; notably, a new variety that was sent me under the name of Dresden China. These sorts having different tints are usefully named with "florists'" names—as Pearl, Snowball, Rob Roy, Sweep, Bride, &c. I may say that I have long grown the Daisy largely, Bride and Sweep being the favourite kinds; both are robust growers, very hardy and early. Bride is the purest white, with ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... enjoyment of that date was a snowball fight. Whether snow is less plentiful, or students are too cultured and too refined for these rough pastimes it is impossible to say, but certain it is that a really great snowball fight is also a thing of the past. In those days they were Homeric combats, and a source of keen ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... and purple, for at the foot of the curving stairway, and on the upper terrace, bunches of lilacs bloomed high above the small spring flowers that bordered the walk. Beneath the fluted columns a single great snowball bush appeared to float like a cloud in the warm wind. As we went together down the winding path to the box maze which was sprinkled with tender green, a squirrel, darting out of one of the latticed arbours, stopped motionless in the walk and sat looking up at us ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... it would be the best way? I never can save enough,—never can pay off what I owe; and it rolls like a snowball." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... were there we'd snowball Death with skulls; Or ride away to hunt in Devil's Wood With ghosts of puppies that we walked of old. But you're alone; and solitude annuls Our earthly jokes; and strangely wise and good You roam forlorn along the ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon

... work together. Wade caught one ship in the molecular ray, and Fuller hit with a heat beam. Like some titanic broom they swept it around at dozens of miles a second, leaping, twisting, smashing ship after ship. Like a snowball, the lump of glowing metal grew with each crash, till a dozen ships had fallen into it. It was a new broom, and ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... the movement goes on more and more quickly, and on an ever- increasing scale, like a snowball, till at last a public opinion in harmony with the new truth is created, and then the whole mass of men is carried over all at once by its momentum to the new truth and establishes a new social order in ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... children, "it may happen That we die before our time! Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We look'd into the pit prepared to take her— Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying—'Get up, little Alice, it is day!' If you listen by that grave in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries; Could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... would fight too if I were not careful. It is a singular fact, though, that the white squirrel has not even a little pugnacity. He either cannot fight, or he is too well behaved. Here, Mr. Clarke, show Snowball this nut, and then hide it in your pocket, and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... some hours over the epoch-making work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with regard to the possible connection of certain symbolic monuments common to widely scattered races. Merman started up in bed. The night was cold, and the sudden withdrawal of warmth made his wife first dream of a snowball, and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... our part of the earth's surface are nearly always white. They have forced their way to the sun along a frozen path and look akin to the perils of their road: the snow-threatened lily of the valley, the chill snowdrop, the frosty snowball, the bleak hawtree, the wintry wild cherry, the wintry dogwood. As the eye swept the park expanse this morning, here and there some of these were as the last tokens of winter's mantle instead of the first ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... a snowball's growth, due as it is to the distribution of the snow on the one hand, and to the successive pushes of the boys on the other, with these factors co-determining ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... very sternly, "I saw you throw a snowball. Aren't you ashamed of yourself that you, a fellow at the head of the eleven, should set such a bad example? Don't suppose that your size or position shall get you off. Come before the monitors directly ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... with the air of a man who has endured to the limit, "you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that. Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in—in the crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... one that startled her father's stable men. She read French novels more or less at random, (unknown to her mother. She had a rather mischievous uncle who was responsible for this development) and she was still deadly accurate with a snowball. A bewildering compound of sophistications and innocence, a modern young sphinx with a riddle ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... dollar to spend. I have decided to buy three shrubs. I shall plant one by itself; the two others together in a clump. I wanted forsythia, but I have finally decided on Japan snowball and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... went up the aisle for his prize, he felt like crying, but he managed to smile instead. A few days before, Harry Meyers had ridiculed him because he was not strong enough to throw a snowball from the schoolhouse to the road; now the teacher had ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... could have expected, not the least being the satisfaction I derived from the sight of the proprietor, who, in the spotless cleanliness of his person and his "dimity," and surrounded by hosts of his travelling inmates—myself among the number—stood forth in bold relief, like a snowball in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... said Will Bailey, throwing himself into a great arm-chair before the glowing fire. "My! I believe I'm a snowball." ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... cargo of "black ivory" in such promising condition before. This, however, was not all; for while superintending these bathing and scrubbing operations I talked cheerfully and pleasantly to the fellows, giving them such names as Tom, Bob, Joe, Snowball, and so on, to which they readily answered, instead of abusing them and ordering them about with brutal oaths and obscenity, as was the habit of the crew; and although the poor wretches understood not a word of what was spoken to them either by the crew or by myself, yet they readily enough distinguished ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... sowed the field of rye, he left the big wooden roller standing in the lane. It was a big roller, almost five feet high! One sunny forenoon Roy and Dorothy raced up the lane with little black Trip and white Snowball at ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various

... pivoted clear around and sat now facing him, an eager, mittened hand staying his hard, skilful, obedient fingers, already making the snowball. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... birds to pick them off); and there in the front of the coast-guard lieutenant's house, is Cobaea scandens, covered with purple claret-glasses, as it has been ever since Christmas: for Aberalva knows no winter: and there are grown-up men in it who never put on a skate, or made a snowball in their lives. A most cleanly, bright-coloured, foreign-looking street, is that long straggling one which runs up the hill towards Penalva Court: only remark, that this cleanliness is gained by making the gutter ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... the Coals," "When Johnny comes marching Home," &c. At the head of the gangway the hosts received their guests, and the numbers in which they trooped on board gave some warrant to Lionel Beauchamp's laughing assertion that giving a party in London is something like the making of a snowball: it increases ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... doe, its mother, died when Snowball was only a week old, and I reared it by feeding it with warm milk and bran; and it is now so fond of me that I would not part with ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... an' tin good miles it was iv a road, an' at the other side iv Keeper intirely; an' it was snowin' so fast that the ould baste could hardly go an at all at all, an' the two bys an his back was jist like a snowball all as one, an' almost fruz an' smothered at the same time, your honour; an' they wor both mighty sorrowful intirely, an' their toes almost dhroppin' ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... disadvantage of oral tradition is not that it forgets but that it proceeds snowball fashion, adding with every generation new edifying matter. The text of the Vedic hymns was preserved with such jealous care that every verse and syllable was counted. But in works of lesser sanctity interpolations and additions were made according to the reciters' ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other whence they come. Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing the jacket ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... sheaf, haycock[obs3]; fascicle, fascicule[obs3], fasciculus[Lat], gavel, hattock[obs3], stook[obs3]. accumulation &c. (store) 636; congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau[obs3], tissue, mass, pyramid; bing[obs3]; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation[obs3], cumulation; glomeration[obs3], agglomeration; conglobation[obs3]; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate[Chem], coacervation[Chem], coagmentation[obs3], aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... her grandfather went forth for their afternoon tramp. There was nothing morbid or anaemic about Sylvia. Every morning she pulled weights and swung Indian clubs with her windows open. A mischievous freshman who had thrown a snowball at Sylvia's heels, in the hope of seeing her jump, regretted his bad manners: Sylvia caught him in the ear with an unexpected return shot. A senior who observed the incident dealt in the lordly way of his kind with the offender. They called her "our co-ed" and "the boss girl" after that. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... I assure you I wasn't reading," I answered, every nerve racked with suspense, lest Frank should get impatient and wonder what had become of me—perhaps throw a snowball up at the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and by its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory of Captain Keith's text from a scrap of printed paper. As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... offend her. 'Though, of course,' they declared, 'we do not really believe in witchcraft and such Popish abominations, still it is certainly true that Hans Frisch, the blacksmith's child, who threw a snowball at her last winter and had the misfortune to hit her on the face, went home, took to his bed, and nearly died of convulsions.' Of this talk Wilhelmine was unaware, though, knowing the effect of her eyes upon people, she would often voluntarily narrow ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... to play snowball fight," decided Sue. "I see Mary Watson and Sadie West. I'm going ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope

... boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling, kicking off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and then leaned against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later he looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile glance, the boy evidently thinking that the other had suspicions of the snowball. When Jurgis started slowly across the street toward him, he gave a quick glance ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair



Words linked to "Snowball" :   ball, increase, snow, frozen dessert, pelt, Abronia elliptica, bombard, sand verbena



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