beach ball
11
1.0
- noun
- /biːtʃ bɔːl/
:
pelota de playa
- There was Joey sitting in the baby seat of the grocery cart, fat and gorgeous—such an equable little beach ball, that one—and all of a sudden the way he looked at you, and you knew it was Daddy looking at you from in there, clear as a bell.
- toss a beach ball
- a blue beach ball
- deflate a beach ball
Think of a person with a big beach ball trying to push a beach ball under the water.
- Think of a person with a big beach ball trying to push a beach ball under the water.
- And because he has no companionship, he paints the face, eyes, nose and mouth on the beach ball and begins talking to the beach ball.
- So like Bran said, the beach ball analogy, if you take a beach ball and you press it this way, it bulges this way, right?
- My question is, why did why does the beach ball get blamed for the wind?
- I've got banana, beach ball, turban, etcetera.
- Well, if you can't find a person then you have a beach ball and of course yourself too.
- Her room was in the eaves of the attic where she'd slung a beach ball colored hammock.
Examples
-
I long to be amid them, or at least rolling like a beach ball along the sand.
Fiction book (1992) -
Think of a person with a big beach ball trying to push a beach ball under the water.
-
How do you get them to balance that beach ball on their nose?
-
Two kids toss a beach ball back and forth.
Fiction book (1998) -
They were passing the beach ball on the sand.
Fiction book (1997) -
Her horse ambled up to the red, white, and blue beach ball that served as the beginners' game ball and stopped.
Fiction book (2002) -
Occasionally, the family materials include items to promote physical activity, such as a beach ball for each family, or the book, The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV.
Academic text (2013) -
Billie aimed carefully at her beach ball, swung the mallet in a loop over her head, and completely missed her target.
Fiction book (2002) -
Snowballs the size of beach balls fall softly, whitely, like presents wrapped in tissue.
Fiction book (1995) -
The children played with a colorful beach ball in the shallow water.
Synonyms
How Buoyant
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a large, lightweight inflatable ball used for play at the beach or in swimming pools' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'beach' (shore) with 'ball' (a round play object). This simple noun-noun compounding follows normal English composition and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The noun beach ball comes from the simple image of a large, light ball used on the beach. Because it can be inflated and often floats, people take it to the sand or pool to 'play', so the name means 'a large, lightweight inflatable ball used for play at the beach or in swimming pools'.