melon ball
2
1.9
- noun
- /ˈmɛlən bɔl/
:
bola de melón
- I'm gonna have a melon ball.
- melon balls scoop
Examples
-
Is that a melon ball?
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Over dessert of melon balls, watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew, she began to feel drowsy.
Fiction book (1996) -
Can I have a double melon ball?
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Ace, get started on those melon balls!
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- Er, woo-woos, melon balls?
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"I want you to behave," Bea said quietly while she scooped out the melon balls.
Fiction book (1999) -
So what we've done is to infuse the the melon balls with beet juice and no one is expecting that.
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If you selected such a cosmic region at random and scooped it out as a perfect sphere, like a giant melon ball, you would want its average properties to be similar in every way to the average properties of any other scoop the same size.
Academic text (2005) -
At the party, the chef served a refreshing salad topped with sweet melon balls.
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She enjoyed a fruit platter that included colorful melon balls and berries.
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'melon' (the fruit) + 'ball' (a small spherical piece), referring to a round scoop or piece of melon. This compound follows a transparent, cross-linguistically common noun + noun pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Melon ball comes from a simple kitchen image: cooks use a small scoop called a 'melon baller' to cut melon into little round balls. That's why melon ball means a 'small, round piece of melon'.