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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



... Indian generally gave way to his English friend; and, obeying directly, they hurried down the first turning, but in vain. A crowd of men and boys were after them, cheering loudly, and this crowd was snowball-like in the way in which the farther it rolled the more it grew. So that in spite of all their efforts they were literally hunted right up to the Doctor's gates, where they arrived hot and breathless to find a larger ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... fascine^, fasces^, bale; seron^, seroon^; fagot, wisp, truss, tuft; shock, rick, fardel^, stack, sheaf, haycock^; fascicle, fascicule^, fasciculus [Lat.], gavel, hattock^, stook^. accumulation &c (store) 636; congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau^, tissue, mass, pyramid; bing^; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation^, cumulation; glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... as close an imitation of this one as Lambert could contrive in a colder climate with smaller means. Here was a fountain trellised over by a framework rich in roses and our lady's bower; here were pinks, gilly-flowers, pansies, lavender, and the new snowball shrub recently produced at Gueldres, and a little bush shown with great pride by Anton, the snow-white rose grown in King Rene's garden ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... yard sloping up to the house was almost full of shrubbery in a state of overgrown prosperity. There were lilacs, dark with buds, and what Anne, who was devotedly curious in matters of growing life, thought althea, snowball and a small-leaved yellow rose. All this runaway shrubbery looked, in a way of speaking, inpenetrable. It would have taken so much trouble to get through that you would have felt indiscreet in trying it. The driveway only seemed to have been ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... 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 ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... exaggeration he came mightily to desire for her more of the open air, both of body and spirit. Often when tramping back to his hotel he communed savagely with himself, turning the problem over and over in his mind until, like a snowball, it had gathered to itself ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... made 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 perched on Jack's ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster

... HECHT, who, as he says, "ten years ago prided himself upon being as indigestible a type of the incoherent young as the land afforded." And nonsenseorship in general he regards as a war-born Frankenstein, a frenzied virtue grown hugely luminous; "a snowball rolling uphill toward God and gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewd janitors of orthodoxy who from age to age were able to ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a snowball against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without waiting ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... 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 of snow, arranged so as to make the shape of a beehive, all frozen together, ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... 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

... Something like this could snowball on Ravenhurst. It isn't only the rats that desert a sinking ship; so does anyone else who ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... when anybody was chasing me. Now we have some kind of breakfast food three times a day because ma reads the advertisements, and dad is so weak he has to be helped to dress, ma goes moping around like a fashionable invalid, I am so tired I can't hit a window with a snowball, and the dog that used to fight cats now wants to lay in front of the grate and wish he was dead. Gosh, but there ought to be a law that any man that invents a new breakfast food should be compelled to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck

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

... 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

... she had felt herself going on in a crowd and with a multiplied escort; the four ladies pictured by her to Sir Luke Strett as a phalanx comparatively closed and detached had in fact proved a rolling snowball, condemned from day to day to cover more ground. Susan Shepherd had compared this portion of the girl's excursion to the Empress Catherine's famous progress across the steppes of Russia; improvised settlements appeared at each turn of the road, villagers waiting with ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... "that isn't what I want. Run, and jump, and shout as much as you please; skate, and slide, and snowball; but do it with politeness to other boys and girls, and I'll agree you will find just as much fun in it. You sometimes say I pet Burke Holland more than any of my child-friends. Can I help it? For though he is lively and sometimes frolicsome, his manners are always good. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... along in then, and read while I get the children ready. Oh, they're out now," she added, as they turned the comer and saw the twins, looking like industrious brownies, rolling a huge snowball across the yard, while Molly was expending her artistic talent on ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... wet," added Peter who was trying to roll a snowball out of the white flakes that were piling themselves on ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... that what is proposed as a little dance invariably ends in a great one; for from the time of proposing till the cards are about, it increases like a snowball; but that arises, perhaps, from the extreme difficulty of knowing when to draw the line between friends and acquaintances. I have also observed that when your wife and daughters intend such a thing, they always ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... 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

... Colonel," he 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 Government also—fer the assistance you have ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... footing on the parapet, and were able to hold the same for the space of two minutes. Both sides were to abstain from putting pebbles into their snowballs, nor was it permissible to use frozen ammunition. A snowball soaked in water and left out to cool was a projectile which in previous years had been resorted to with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... best dog," quoth John, "why, I'll be bound that our Snowball would beat him with one of his legs tied up. Talk of running such a cur as that against Snowball! Why there's Phoebe's pet Venus, Snowball's great grandam, who was twelve years old last May, and has not seen a hare these ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... 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, values had so shrunk that it looked to Jarrocks as if they could ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... I then began 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 parish ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... not suit me. They wear their hearts on their hands and on their mouths. You present yourself for admission to a club. They say, 'I promise to give you a white ball. It will be an alabaster ball—a snowball! They vote. It's a black ball. Life seems a vile affair when I think ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... A snowball struck me on the chin, and they began pelting me and laughing. I was like a baited bear. I was beside myself with rage and helpless fury. The icy balls hit my face a dozen times; one struck me behind the ear and ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... seat and took the little girl on his lap, covering her with an extra shawl. The boys dropped down on their knees in the straw. It was a great jam, but everybody was jolly and full of good-natured fun. Now and then a youngster threw a snowball that made a shower of snow in the sleigh, but the passengers ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... grow bigger!" declared Bert. "A snowball grows bigger the more you roll it in the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope

... wished to be in readiness to deliver up the command on the expected arrival of Richard from Ireland; but at the same time he left open the road from Yorkshire to the metropolis, and allowed the adventurer to pursue his object without impediment. Henry was already on his march. The snowball increased as it rolled along, and the small number of forty followers, with whom he had landed, swelled by the time that he had reached St. Albans to sixty thousand men. He was preceded by his messengers and letters, stating not only his own ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... come down to us through distance Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame, Life seems the smallest portion of existence; Where twenty ages gather o'er a name, 'T is as a snowball which derives assistance From every flake, and yet rolls on the same, Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow; But, after all, 't ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... thousand men. The spectacle was therefore as agreeable and imposing as might be; because we could not help remembering that this magnificent fleet was sailing in an enemy's bay, and that it was filled with troops for the invasion of that enemy's country. Thus, like a snowball, we had gathered as we went on, and from having set out a mere handful of soldiers, were now become an army, formidable as well from ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... out the icy pastry, gathered all his strength to hurl a ball back at Frank. But he "wound up," as baseball pitchers call that curving swinging of the arm just before the ball is thrown, with such vigor that he lost his balance. His feet went up into the air and he came down ker-plunk! but the snowball left his hand with what proved to be ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... the voice again, 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 whack ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... in America, were well attended, and even better received. Party 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 the votes of the men who believed in ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... 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 with ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... I 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 one for her. ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... place was under the Snowball bush, where the ground was covered with white petals dropped from the countless blossom-balls that made ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright

... possum gentleman angrily. "Why, those good for nothing Squirrel Brothers threw a snowball into my window." And then Grandpa Possum shook the snow out of his left ear and looked around ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory

... Mrs. Oakes Ames The Woman's Journal Printers: E.L. Grimes, M.J. Grimes, William Grimes Mary A. Livermore William Lloyd Garrison Wendell Phillips Julia Ward Howe Armenia White Margaret Foley Thomas Wentworth Higginson Mrs. David Hunt The Anti and the Snowball ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan

... including indefinite ferns, moss, grass, 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 barrenness and the predominance of traits other than sexual. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... dear soul, go back a few short paces, Thou wilt find, my love, a verdant forest, In the forest stands a cooling fountain, In the fountain lies a block of marble; On the marble stands a golden goblet, In the goblet thou wilt find a snowball. Dearest, take that snowball from the goblet, Lay it on thy heart within thy bosom; Even as the snowball will be melting, Even so, love, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... are also good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... He lit his pipe and flipped the match away. "Cheap to say, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?" ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... 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 right, or portion of it, at once for L25,000 in cash. The Minister of Mines, in his ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... she had talked investments the last time they had met. She had a little money of her own. If the old fox would only take it and roll it up into a big snowball! Isabelle, now, with all that wealth! Conny pursed her lips in disgust to think that so much of the ammunition of war had fallen into such incompetent hands. "Yes," she said to herself, "the Senator must show me how to do it." Perhaps it flitted vaguely through ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... know how long the little rabbit would have stood there wondering at the sudden change if something hadn't happened. Whiz! went a snowball past his ear. The Farmer's Boy leaned over and picked up some more snow. But the little rabbit didn't wait to see what sort of a snowball he would make this time. No, siree. He hopped back to the dear Old Bramble Patch ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory

... up!" said Scaife; "you make me feel more of an outsider than good old Snowball." He glanced at a youth sitting close to them. Snowball was as black as a coal: the son of the Sultan of the Sahara. "Yes, Caesar, you can't get away from it, I ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... HALL 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 which will interest ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.

... during years had very little occasion for a doctor's services, and we, with this great family, have had to have groceries, shoes, and every other thing, and Potter's bill has kept rolling up like a great snowball, bit by bit. We pay something now and then. I sold my old sideboard that came to me from my grandparents, and paid a hundred dollars on it six months ago. Old Mr. Potter died. Rufus reigns in his stead, as the Bible says, and he wants to collect his money. I do not blame him, Grace, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... tale was told, Like a snowball growing while it rolled. The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry; And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, To paint the primitive serpent by. Cotton Mather came galloping down All the way to Newbury town, With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, And ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... crossed the streams "Lethe" and "Styx"; plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers,—the icicle, the orange-flower, the acanthus, the grapes, and the snowball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... 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 florets full, shining, and well reflexed; rather larger than a florin, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... at 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 Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... 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 play is an ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... sense is ravished. And of primary qualities, also, precisely the same thing may with equal confidence be alleged. A stone which I perceive to be large, round, hard, and either rotating or motionless, has no more perception of its own extension, figure, solidity, motion, or rest than a snowball has of its colour or temperature. But all this, though perfectly true, has nothing to do with the question, which is not what qualities of matter are, but where they are, and whether they can exist anywhere but in mind; and this question, I submit, is distinctly begged ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... 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

... nearest exit to the platform of the car. He was gone some time, and when he reappeared he carried in both hands a great soggy snowball, bigger ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

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

... "Perhaps you weren't attending. Major Clowes was very down on him for wearing it—chaffing him, of course, but chaffing half in earnest: a snowball with a stone in it. Naturally Val wasn't going to say you ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... vine of our own and known by a special name—virgin's bower. With its delicate leaves, almost as beautiful as a maidenhair fern, and its dainty pink flower, it festooned the ripening corn as wantonly and luxuriantly as it encircled the snowball and lilac bushes. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... always took King Inge's side. Ottar Birting was killed north in the merchant town (Nidaros), in an assault upon him in the twilight as he was going to the evening song. When he heard the whistling of the blow he held up his cloak with his hands against it; thinking, no doubt, it was a snowball thrown at him, as young boys do in the streets. Ottar fell by the stroke; but his son, Alf Hrode, who just at the same moment was coming into the churchyard, saw his father's fall, and saw that the man who had killed ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... thus roused by the presence of Snowball, had its development greatly assisted by the scrupulosity with which most things in the kitchen, and chief of all in this respect, the churn, were kept. It required much effort to come up to the nicety considered by Jean ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... 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, and was by no means aware of the real peril which threatened him. The ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... 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

... alive. The cold never agrees with me. (Looking at fire) That's not a very dangerous fire, an' I'm as cold as a snowball. ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien

... streets with double avenues of healthy trees. Berlin in spring seems to be set in a wood; it is so fresh and green. The flowering shrubs, on the other hand, are not to be compared with ours. Everyone rushes to see a few lilac bushes, and Gueldres roses trimmed to a stiff snowball of flowers, and everyone says Wie Herrlich! but you miss the profusion of lilac, hawthorn, and laburnum that runs riot all about London in every residential road and every garden. Above all, you miss the English lawns. In Berlin wherever grass is grown ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... shadowy mounds of loose earth flickered the light of a fire, small and distant, round which wavered the inky silhouettes of men, and beyond which dimly shone a yellow face or two, a yellow fist clutched full of boiled rice like a snowball. Beyond these, in turn, gleamed other little fires, where other coolies were squatting at ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... right, 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

... cousin Charlotte,' said Knight. 'You are like the boy who puts a stone inside his snowball, and I shall play with you no longer. Excuse me—I am going for my ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... good kittens, I will tell you all about them. Goldie! come down from that stool, and sit down like a good kitten. Sweep! leave off sharpening your claws on the furniture; that always ends in trouble and punishment. Snowball! you're asleep again! Oh, well; if you'd rather sleep than hear ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit

... black-eyed Susans with outdoor ferns, bowers of snowy dogwood in season and the fluffy wild pink azalea are very decorative, and so are the spring and early summer shrubs: syringa, deutzia, flowering almond and Japanese snowball. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt

... credit to them for a great effort. They by no means grasp at present the fact that with every acre they add to arable, with each additional acre of wheat, they increase their own importance and stability, and set the snowball of permanent prosperity in their industry rolling anew. Pasture was a policy adopted by men who felt defeat in their bones, saw bankruptcy round every corner. Those who best know seem agreed that after the war the price of wheat will not ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... the snow began. "We really thought it was time to begin work on the land," said the people; but they could put up with the cold—there was still time enough. They proceeded to snowball one another, and set their sledges in order; all through the winter there had been no toboggan-slide. Soon the snow was up to one's ankles, and the slide was made. Now it might as well stop snowing. It might lie a week or ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... for Teter Johnston. His undaunted courage, as exhibited in snowball fights, when, with only a handful of followers he would charge upon the rest of the school, and generally put them to flight; his reckless enterprise and amazing luck at marbles and other games; his constant championing of the small boys when tormented by the larger ones, more than ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... blossoms on 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

... asked. 'Of course it is,' they can reply. 'I know the man, Clem Sypher himself.' And the friends are convinced and go about saying they know a man who knows Clem Sypher, and so the thing spreads like a snowball. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... 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

... 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 ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... that 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... cottage, and days were not so cold or snows so deep but that Sylvia and 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 ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... ma frien', but w'en you spark for keep She's not sam t'ing an' mak' you feel so scare lak' leetle sheep Some tam you get de fever—some tam you're lak snowball An' all de tam you ack lak' fou—can't spik ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond

... 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

... Deutschland?" he finally exclaimed. "Ah! It will be great and wonderful. But where it will end—who knows! Will it be like the Tower of Babel, great in conception, great in execution, but overreaching in its greatness? Will our destiny be like the snowball, accumulating as it rolls till it becomes immovable in its immensity? Then—stagnation! And yet the start of that snowball ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... be sown in the early part of the month. The best sorts now are White Gem, or Snowball. All the Year Round will please those who like a ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... make a snowball, and keep pressing and kneading it in your hands, you will soon convert it into a solid lump of ice. That is just what the sun does to the snowfield. It keeps melting the new snow, and this presses down into the old snow, so that the weight ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... 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, because so dull—into the tender ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... 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

... 1/8. I didnt know what pemmican was and I didnt particularly care, but if a man could invest at 1/16 he could double his money overnight when it rose to 1/8. Then he could reverse the process by selling before it went down and so snowball into fortune. It was a daydream, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... at last, when I'd fmished my milking i' the mistal, I got him to bed, and then I sat misen down by the fire and had a reet good roar. I were tired to death, and wished that I'd niver been born. Iverything had gone agee that day: butter wouldn't coom, Snowball had kicked ower the pail while I was milking her, and, atop o' all that, there was grandfather wi' ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... Margaret. Iberis amara; coronaria, White Rocket. Ipomoea hederacea. Lavatera alba. Malope grandiflora alba. Matthiola (Stocks), Cut and Come Again; Dresden Perpetual; Giant Perfection; White Pearl. Mirabilis longiflora alba. Nigella. Phlox, Dwarf Snowball; Leopoldii. Poppies, Flag of Truce; ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... them. We should have had to go out to three breakfasts, two dinners, and six parties a night, if we had attempted to do more than read them all. For since Mr. King's literary reunion, the popularity of your missionary has increased like a rolling snowball, and her invitations came by the peck ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... finally lost in one downward swoop towards the river, tearing open the liquid blackness with its crystal blade of fire. The rain ceased not. But soon the moon, peeping out from the tops of a jagged wall above us, looking like a soiled, half-melted snowball, shone full down the far-stretching gorge, and now its broad lustre shed itself, like powdered silver, over the whole scene, so that one could have imagined oneself in the living splendor of some eternal sphere of ethereal sweetness. And so it might have been had the rain abated—a curious ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... there be such pure and unmixed ecstacy? I lean upon ye rustic stile, and watch the children with a smile, and think upon a vanished day, when I, as joyous, used to play, when all the world seemed young and bright, and every hour had its delight; and, as I brush away a tear, a snowball hits me in ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... of Judge Popinot, the gifts obtained through the Abbe de Veze, and the assistance lent by the firm of Mongenod must produce a large capital; and that this capital, increased during the last dozen years by grateful returns from those assisted, must have grown like a snowball, inasmuch as the charitable stewards of it spent so little on themselves. Little by little he began to see clearly into this vast work, and his desire ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... about it! For that's what you believe. And that's what makes life so hard and bitter and gloomy to you. I know! I carried Calvinism around within me once: it was like an uncorked ink-bottle in a rolling snowball: the farther you go, the blacker you get! Admit it now," he continued in his highest key of rarefied persistency, "admit that you were mourning over the babies in your school that will have to go to hell! You'd better be getting ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... said Langdon at last. "It took a lot to make enough, but it's enough. You have to be a soldier, Harry, to appreciate what it is to eat, sleep and rest. I'm willing to wager my uniform against a last winter's snowball that we don't get another such meal in a month. Old Jack won't ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... he told the driver to go ahead. Did she mean that she would think of marrying him, by any chance? Of course she did, Alphonse. Hadn't he seen that all over her face three days ago? If he hadn't, he was a snowball. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... 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 voices ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... distributing 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

... rose to greet Deacon Bostick who had turned in the front gate and got as far up the front walk as the second snowball bush. The Deacon was tall, lean, bent and snow-crowned, with bright old eyes that rested in a benediction on the group on the porch that his fine old smile confirmed. By the hand he led a tiny boy who was clad in a long nondescript garment and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... fardel[obs3], stack, 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... door brought them in view of a white and silent earth under keen stars, and Dick Curtis and the bilious boatbuilder, foot to foot, snowball in hand. A bout of the smart exercise made Mr. Moody laugh again, and all parted merrily, delivering final shots as they went their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... remember that it 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 when it was time for school to "take up," there wasn't any ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... What made you throw that snowball?" demanded Phil, in a tone that showed he did not ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... Poor Brother started out, with the ham under his arm, to find the home of the dwarfs. He trudged on through the snow until he saw seven queer little dwarfs rolling a huge snowball, at the ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie

... one. He always does that, and he 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, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... asked a Jack in the Box. "No, it couldn't be that," he went on, "for a rubber doll isn't as white as a snowball. ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope

... object with an ever-increasing halo of charm and splendor, and this halo of sexual origin increases in its turn the sentiments of sympathy; and the sentiments of sympathy increase the sexual desire. In this way mutual suggestions grow like a snowball, and rapidly attain the culminating point of amorous intoxication, or what is called being madly ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... 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; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... like a rolling snowball; a certain amount forms a base for extra improvement, and upon successive foundations of increasing altitude the eminence has been attained of the present era. This is the effect of "reason;" but "instinct," although ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... moment, the field of my vision was open, and I saw Mrs. Mitchell holding her head with both hands, and the face of Turkey grinning round the corner of the open door. Evidently he wanted to entice her to follow him; but she had been too much astonished by the snowball in the back of her neck even to look in the direction whence the blow had come. So Turkey stepped out, and was just poising himself in the delivery of a second missile, when she turned ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... a century Margret lived among her fowl, untroubled by her kin. Then the talk about the money grew from little beginnings like a snowball. It fired Mrs. Jack with a curious excitement, for she was an ignorant woman and ready to believe any extravagant story. She amazed Jack by putting the blame of their long ignoring of Margret upon his shoulders entirely, and when he stared at her, dumb-founded, she seized and shook him ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... ever striking deeper. It was assumed between them that the expulsion of the Modernist clergy was only a question of months—possibly weeks. Once indeed Meynell referred slightly to the agitation in the country, to the growing snowball of the petition to Parliament, to the now certain introduction of a Bill "To promote an amended constitution for the Church of England." The Bishop's eyebrows went up, his lip twitched. It was the scorn of a spiritual ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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)

... 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

... direction, but she stood close to a great snowball-bush, and her dress was green muslin, and he did not see her. Thinking that he had been mistaken, he started on, when she called again, and this time she stepped apart from the bush and her voice ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... houses and the shrubbery of old- fashioned, overgrown gardens, and peer out at the human wanderer therein with a charming curiosity. The bright eyes of the male masquerader shine through his black mask, where he intently watches you from the tangle of syringa and snowball bushes; and as he flies into the laburnum with its golden chain of blossoms that pale before the yellow of his throat and breast, you are so impressed with his grace and elegance that you follow too audaciously, he thinks, and off he goes. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... 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

... Korley's name down for $50, which started it well. Mr. Jowett could do no less than Mr. Korley, and Mr. Wheaton no less than Mr. Jowett; and so, the subscription once started, grew very rapidly, like a boy's snowball, to adequate proportions. The second Tuesday in July I was enabled to give notice to all the subcribers to meet at my house. My parlors were well filled. I had taken pains to get some lady subscribers, and they were there as well ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... 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

... was dangerous to 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, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... and began unharnessing the horse. Kate sat still and watched him until he led it away, then she stepped down and started across the barnyard, down the lane leading to the dooryard. As she closed the yard gate and rounded a widely spreading snowball bush, her heart was pounding wildly. What was coming? How would the other boys act, if Adam, the best balanced man of them all, was behaving as he was? How would her mother greet her? With the thought, Kate ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... themselves with a rum-barrel. At a distance floated the ship's gig, with the captain, the mate, the carpenter and three other men. Finally, there is a construction, hardly more than a large barrel, containing Snowball, an African ship's cook of the Coromantee tribe, together with a little girl of eight or ten. Luckily these get together with Ben Brace and the boy William, and it is their adventures that the story is mainly about. The author is a natural historian, and he tells us lots ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... where I 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 of my life seems dreary and void, except ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Gypsy, in a little flash, "I don't see! never to go out in the wind and jump on the hay, and climb the mountains, and run and row and snowball,—why, it would kill me! And you lie here so sweet and patient, and you haven't said a cross word all the while you've been telling me about it. I don't understand! How can you, can you ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... selection, favorite local varieties were obtained; but, of late years, this has been, to a large degree, superseded by several excellent sorts, of which the Extra-Early Dwarf Erfurt was, doubtless the parent. Principal among these varieties are the Snowball, the Sea-Foam, Vick's Ideal, and Berlin Dwarf. All of these are early sorts and excellent strains. After testing them side by side, I find that the best strain of the Snowball is not excelled by either of them. Of the somewhat later ripening sorts, a variety which originated in this country, called ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

... him for his ancestry convinced them that while he might not have had illustrious ancestors, it was not unlikely that he would in time develop illustrious descendants, and the jeerings and sneerings soon ceased. The climax of Bonaparte's career at Brienne was in 1784, when he directed a snowball fight between two evenly divided branches of the school with such effect that one boy had his skull cracked and the rest were laid up for ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... a photograph. Still, even to the eye looking directly at the cluster through a powerful telescope, the central part of the wonderful congregation seems almost a solid mass in which the stars are packed like the ice crystals in a snowball. ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... long time, all of us. Even Little Tom Till, the red-haired, freckled-faced little brother of Big Bob Till who was Big Jim's worst enemy, was there. Time flew faster than anything, when all of a sudden Circus who had rolled a big snowball down the hill, said, "Let's make a snow man—let's make Mr. Black"—which sounded like more fun, so we all started in, not knowing that Circus was going to make a comic snow man, the most ridiculous looking snow man I'd ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... 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 Miss Macroyd so conspicuously, and partly because ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... a coach—would have said to this, I went to open the curtains, and had effected this to some extent, when one of a crowd of idlers who stood on the raised pavement deliberately lifted up his arm and flung a snowball at me. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman



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



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