I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
effect
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All this has a snowball effect on the day's turnover and on the individual dealers' commissions.
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That affects the mock-up, or test, of the windows, and it has a snowball effect on other trades.
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A snowball effect is the desired goal.
■ VERB
throw
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They were the people in top hats that the rest of us used to throw snowballs at.
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The boys would throw stones or snowballs with rocks in them.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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The kids were having a snowball fight outside.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Another makes a pet of a snowball , which wets the bed then runs away.
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At once there is a parabolic storm of snowballs.
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From a distance, Europa had seemed like a giant snowball , reflecting the light of the far-off Sun with remarkable efficiency.
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He was born in Enniskillen and shortly after he joined Portora Royal School lost an eye in a snowball fight.
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I liked playing dodgeball, tossing snowballs, being a roughneck.
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Saw him today on the plateau throwing snowballs at the skuas and shouting at aeroplanes.
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This difference is accounted for by the younger average age of the snowball sample.
II. verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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By Tuesday, the rumors had snowballed into a huge loss on the stock market.
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Things hadn't exactly been going our way, but after the first defeat, everything sort of snowballed.
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Unemployment snowballed at the beginning of the 1980s.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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At this time the brutality of the vicious Communist thugs was snowballing into cold-blooded savagery.
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Gradually, one large, snowballing finale will dominate the dance-off.
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It's like something you fasten on to in times of confusion and it snowballs out of hand.
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Late wages and underemployment have snowballed not only across factories but also throughout public and private workplaces.
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Start with the stalwarts of the organisation and let the message fan out from there, snowballing as it goes along.
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The campaign was snowballing and life was getting increasingly hectic.
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The smallest deviation might snowball and produce a wobbly vertical ridge when the whole wall was complete.