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Glite Dictionary
speech balloon

speech balloon

4.7
A round shape in a comic that shows what a character says
  • noun
  • /spiːtʃ ˈbælən/
translation icon : globo de diálogo
  • Each character's dialogue was enclosed in a speech balloon, making it easy to follow the conversation.

Examples

  • The top of the cartoon contains a speech balloon, and the tail is pointing towards one of the women facing the viewers.

    Academic text (2018)

  • So if you hold fix the words and you could either make it a a smooth circular speech balloon or you could change it and make it the cloudy thought balloon.

  • In the comic strip, the character shouted excitedly inside a speech balloon that floated above his head.

  • The artist drew a speech balloon next to the character to show what she was saying.

Synonyms

speech bubble
vsspeech balloon
1 2.8

A rounded shape in comics that shows what a character says or thinks

contains only words spoken by a character rather than thoughts

Surface Forms

speech balloon singular
speech balloons plural

Morphology

speech + balloon

The meaning is directly derivable from 'speech' (spoken words) + 'balloon' (a rounded container-like object): comics commonly use a rounded 'balloon' shape to contain characters' speech, so a learner who knows the constituents can infer this graphic function. The construction is cross-linguistically common (often translated as 'speech bubble/balloon'), making it immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Speech balloon comes from early comics where speech (what a character says) was placed inside a rounded balloon-like shape. Because the words looked like a small floating balloon from the mouth, the term now means 'the space in a comic that shows what someone says'.