Definitions

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

  • noun The seed-bearing capsule of certain plants, especially cotton and flax.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To form into or produce bolls or rounded seed-vessels.
  • noun A round vessel for containing liquids; a bowl. See bowl, of which boll is the earlier spelling.
  • noun A vesicle or bubble.
  • noun A rounded pod or capsule of a plant, as of flax or cotton. See cut under cotton-plant.
  • noun A round knob.
  • Same as boln.
  • To increase.
  • noun An old Scotch dry measure, also used in Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and the Isle of Man.

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

  • intransitive verb To form a boll or seed vessel; to go to seed.
  • noun The pod or capsule of a plant, as of flax or cotton; a pericarp of a globular form.
  • noun A Scotch measure, formerly in use: for wheat and beans it contained four Winchester bushels; for oats, barley, and potatoes, six bushels. A boll of meal is 140 lbs. avoirdupois. Also, a measure for salt of two bushels.

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

  • noun The rounded seed-bearing capsule of a cotton or flax plant.
  • verb To form a boll or seed vessel; to go to seed.

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

  • noun the rounded seed-bearing capsule of a cotton or flax plant

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Middle Dutch bolle, round object; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • This problem has been going on since Monty was a lad its called boll**cks.

    Army Rumour Service 2010

  • A tiny little insect called the boll weevil had migrated from South America and was quickly destroying their crops.

    It’s Your Time Joel Osteen 2010

  • A tiny little insect called the boll weevil had migrated from South America and was quickly destroying their crops.

    It’s Your Time Joel Osteen 2010

  • A tiny little insect called the boll weevil had migrated from South America and was quickly destroying their crops.

    It’s Your Time JOEL OSTEEN 2009

  • "One of the finds is that when under attack from plant-feeding insects, such as boll weevils and bollworms, plants have an ability to recognize they are in danger and to emit SOS-type signals to recruit the good guys," Lewis said.

    Delta Farm Press RSS Feed 2009

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