Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A ball or missile, originally of stone, but now usually of cast-iron or steel, designed to be thrown from a cannon.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • So I drank with them, drink by drink, raw and straight, though the damned stuff couldn't compare with a stick of chewing taffy or a delectable "cannon-ball."

    Chapter 6 2010

  • Again there was a puff of smoke and a loud report, this time the cannon-ball striking not more than twenty feet astern and glancing twice from sea to sea to windward ere it sank.

    Chapter 25 2010

  • Then came my boy code: when on a day a fellow gave another a "cannon-ball" or a chunk of taffy, on some other day he would expect to receive back a cannon-ball or a chunk of taffy.

    Chapter 9 2010

  • We were in our state of probation, awaiting, in the midst of awful sacrifice, for the coming of one, who, out of our defeats, should wring victory — great, glorious, and lasting; who should bring peace by humiliating a foe whose dangerous spirit could be allayed only by pinning it to the earth with bayonet and cannon-ball.

    The First World War Memoirs of Sampson J. Goodfellow, Part 5: The Cookhouse Revolution ewillett 2008

  • If a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the breast, he would make the same face that Fauchelevent made.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • It makes a cannon-ball of a rough stone, and a general of a porter.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • The Brazil nut is not a nut, which in botany refers to a specific kind of fruit, but a seed that comes from a cannon-ball like, woody capsule (a fruit that naturally opens to release the seeds).

    Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) 2008

  • Gavroche produced a greater sensation in the barricade than the cannon-ball.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • “It was a French cannon-ball which made that,” she said to him.

    Les Miserables 2008

  • Quite near here, in the Rue Saint – Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonamdieres, there is a cannon-ball incrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription: ‘July 28th, 1830.’

    Les Miserables 2008

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