ball and chain
3
6.9
- noun
- Archaic
:
bola y cadena
- At home, her father fastened a ball and chain to her leg.
- the old ball and chain
Examples
-
You know the ol' ball and chain?
-
Hey, meet my wife, the old ball and chain.
-
It will be a damned ball and chain.
Fiction book (1993) -
She's somebody else's ball and chain now.
-
He tied me up with a ball and chain and made my ankle swell ?
-
It looks like it was part of a ball and chain arrangement that the Japanese used on their prisoners, but the boys thought you could use it to practice your shot putting.
Fiction book (1990) -
The old prisoner walked slowly, dragging his heavy ball and chain across the dusty floor.
-
In historical movies, we often see characters struggling with a ball and chain as a symbol of their imprisonment.
-
During the reenactment, the actor wore a ball and chain to depict the harsh realities of prison life.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a heavy iron ball attached to a prisoner's leg by a chain' is directly and literally composed from the known words 'ball' and 'chain' linked by 'and', so a learner who knows the constituents can infer the device. This straightforward physical composition is cross-linguistically common, making the expression readily understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Ball and chain comes from a real prison tool: a heavy iron ball fastened to a prisoner's leg with a chain so the prisoner had to drag it and could not run away. That's why the phrase means 'a heavy iron ball attached to a prisoner's leg to keep them from running away'.