1400–50; late Middle English bolle, perhaps < Middle Dutch bolle ( Dutch bol ), though formally identical with bowl 1
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
So the migration is as much about work and the boll weevil as it is about this notion of opportunity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 20, 2022
We assume he wove it himself out of whatever cotton-esque plants are flourishing after he killed exactly one-half the boll weevils on his planet of refuge.
From Slate ● Apr. 25, 2019
A cotton boll includes the hard, sharp-edged protective case inside of which the cotton develops.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 1, 2019
The cotton boll weevil is considered a major pest because of the damage it does to cotton plants.
From Textbooks ● Sep. 6, 2018
Besides boll weevils, rain is just about the worst thing that can happen at harvest time.
From "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
The second story, “The Long and Painful Death,” chronicles a female writer whose residency at the home of Heinrich Böll is soured by the arrival of a male academic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 14, 2023
The Green Party's foundation, named after Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Heinrich Böll, is in more than 30 countries.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2021
The book received a critical boost from Nobel Prize-winning writer Heinrich Böll, who praised its “gloomy and quiet poetry,” while noting that he had to overcome a “threshold of disgust.”
From Washington Post ● Jan. 2, 2019
Research for this article was made possible with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 28, 2018
Almost five years later, Germans have undergone “a brutal sobering up” with regard to Mr. Obama, said Ralf Fücks, who heads the board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2013
As children in the 1960s, Collier and his siblings worked the cotton fields around Black Swamp, lugging burlap sacks up and down long rows and pulling white bolls from between the plants’ needle-like stems.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2020
Celina, who is African American, said Northam passed around raw cotton bolls and tobacco leaves for the whole tour group to touch.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 1, 2019
Her child cried, and it distracted her, slowed the accumulation of cotton bolls in her sack.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 28, 2017
Cotton picking occurred as many as seven times a season as the plant grew and continued to produce bolls through the fall and early winter.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014
As a finishing touch, we arranged cotton bolls on the boughs to look like snow, something we had all heard about but never seen.
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
