cannonball
Americannoun
adjective
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made from a curled-up position with the arms pressing the knees against one's chest.
a cannonball dive.
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moving at great speed.
a train known as a cannonball express.
noun
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a projectile fired from a cannon: usually a solid round metal shot
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tennis
-
a very fast low serve
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( as modifier )
a cannonball serve
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-
a jump into water by a person who has his arms tucked into the body to form a ball
verb
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to rush along, like a cannonball
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to execute a cannonball jump
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cannonball
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“We need to have the basic things,” said Biniam Girmay, a high-speed cannonball from Eritrea who in 2024 won three sprint stages at the Tour de France.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
Of all the dirty, rotten, down-low things Netflix has done, providing a gaping pit of gold coins for Adam Sandler to cannonball into like Scrooge McDuck might be the worst so far.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2025
Valencia says on his website he has more than two decades of experience as a human cannonball.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2025
Here they tautologically come, slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball.
From BBC ● Dec. 31, 2024
Taryn loved Gigi too, and during the summer, the four of them would go to the rec center pool and lie in the sun and cannonball into the water.
From "Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World" by Ashley Herring Blake
A crew digging a hole for an electrical conduit in Waltham, Massachusetts, Monday unearthed 13 cannonballs.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 28, 2023
For years, it was unclear why, but a new study suggests jet expulsions of hot matter burped out like cosmic cannonballs are behind it.
From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2023
“Sometimes, we’d wait until boats were coming into the harbor and do cannonballs, splashing them,” she recalled often.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2023
The images centered on the 1797 warship USS Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides because, while it sank a British vessel during the War of 1812, its thick, oak hull survived a barrage of cannonballs.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 1, 2022
It tells the story of a place that was working iron and steel so far back that it made cannonballs for the Union army.
From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove
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.
