croquet ball
1
5.0
- noun
- /kroʊˈkeɪ bɔl/
:
bola de croquet
- The furious feline, formerly furry, shot through the spreading arch of Smedley's legs as if Tibbles were a croquet ball and Smedley the wicket.
Examples
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-All right, when you were three, I knocked your front teeth out with a croquet ball.
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His dark eyes became glistening orbs behind the dark shapes of his glasses; his bald head seemed as smooth as a croquet ball.
Fiction book (1993) -
A main bough gave out five years ago under the weight of fruit the size of croquet balls, which should have been picked but wasn't (there are just so many things you can do with lemons).
Fiction book (1992) -
The children enjoyed their afternoon playing croquet with brightly colored croquet balls on the green lawn.
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He picked up the red croquet ball and aimed carefully before striking it with the mallet.
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During the summer picnic, the family set up a croquet game and laid out the croquet balls in a row.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a wooden ball used in the game of croquet' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'croquet' (the lawn game) with 'ball' (a round play object). This simple noun–noun compound follows a common compositional pattern found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Croquet ball comes from the garden game croquet, where players use a wooden mallet to hit small balls across the grass and try to send them through hoops. So the phrase simply means 'a wooden ball used in the game of croquet'.