Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A game played by rolling a ball down a wooden alley in order to knock down a triangular group of ten pins.
  • noun A similar game, such as duckpins or ninepins.
  • noun Lawn bowling.
  • noun The playing of one of these games.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In dyeing, the washing of fabrics by passing them over rollers in a vessel of water.
  • noun The act of playing with or at bowls.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of playing at or rolling bowls, or of rolling the ball at cricket; the game of bowls or of tenpins.
  • noun a covered place for playing at bowls or tenpins.
  • noun a level piece of greensward or smooth ground for bowling, as the small park in lower Broadway, New York, where the Dutch of New Amsterdam played this game.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of bowl.
  • noun A game played by rolling a ball down an alley and trying to knock over a triangular group of ten pins; ten-pin bowling
  • noun New England candlepin bowling
  • noun Several similar games played indoors or outdoors.
  • noun cricket The action of propelling the ball towards the batsman.
  • noun slang A particular style of walking associated with urban street culture.
  • noun gerund The action of the verb bowl.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a game in which balls are rolled at an object or group of objects with the aim of knocking them over or moving them
  • noun (cricket) the act of delivering a cricket ball to the batsman
  • noun the playing of a game of tenpins or duckpins etc

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • In the U.S. a term meant to refer to ten-pin bowling.

    February 4, 2008

  • "Now before anyone lectures me about advising under the influence, please note that writing an advice column is a lot like bowling: Not only can you do it drunk, you're probably better at it drunk. My good friend Miss Manners won't even look at her mail until she's ripped to the tits."

    —Dan Savage, "Savage Love," August 17, 2006

    August 6, 2008