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• boll
  boll

  noun

  a rounded seed vessel or pod of a plant, as of flax or cotton.
• Böll
  Böll

  noun

  Heinrich (Theodor) 1917–85, German novelist and short-story writer: Nobel Prize 1972.

boll

¹ American  

[bohl] / boʊl /

noun

Botany.

• bolls
  plural

1. a rounded seed vessel or pod of a plant, as of flax or cotton.

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Böll ² American  

[bœl] / bœl /

noun

1. Heinrich (Theodor) 1917–85, German novelist and short-story writer: Nobel Prize 1972.

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boll ¹ British  

/ bəʊl /

noun

1. the fruit of such plants as flax and cotton, consisting of a rounded capsule containing the seeds

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Böll ² British  

/ bœl /

noun

1. Heinrich (ˈhaɪnrɪç) ( Theodor ). 1917–85, German novelist and short-story writer; his novels include Group Portrait with Lady (1971): Nobel prize for literature 1972

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boll Scientific  

/ bōl /

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

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• bolls
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of boll

1400–50; late Middle English bolle, perhaps < Middle Dutch bolle ( Dutch bol ), though formally identical with bowl ¹

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

boll Böll bolls

With the boll weevil finishing off King Cotton, paper producers’ “plant ’em thick, cut ’em quick” approach spread.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

Cotton boll weevils, which originated in Mexico, were first identified in Beeville, Tex., in 1894.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 7, 2022

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

As we eat, Daddy and the Senator talk about cotton prices, boll weevils.

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

“It’s not just a technical shift. It’s a societal shift,” said Rebecca Bertram, an energy expert with the Greens party-aligned Heinrich Böll Foundation.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2017

Di Benedetto was released in 1977, thanks to the intercession of the renowned Argentinean writer Ernesto Sábato and of the Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, who wrote to the head of the military government.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 15, 2017

Encouraged by other members of the group, among them the writers Heinrich Böll and Uwe Johnson, he decided to abandon what some said was a promising career in sculpture and devote himself to literature.

From New York Times ● Apr. 13, 2015

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

An estimated $150 million worth of cotton has been lost as the storms ripped the bolls off plants and left white fiber strewn across fields.

From Reuters ● Aug. 29, 2017

Fingers bleeding, we pluck the sharp, pointy, sticky bolls, stuff them into sacks, then press them into bales and bind them with cord.

From "Will’s Race for Home" by Jewell Parker Rhodes

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