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bowl

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A roughly hemispherical container used to hold, mix or present food, such as salad, fruit or soup, or other items.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

bohl
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈboʊl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A roughly hemispherical container used to hold, mix or present food, such as salad, fruit or soup, or other items.

  2. cooking

    A dish comprising a mix of different foods, not all of which need be cooked, served in a bowl.

  3. The part of a spoon that holds content, as opposed to the handle.

  4. Part of a pipe, bong, or other smoking implement that holds the material to be burned.

  5. The round hollow part of anything.

  6. A haircut in which straight hair is cut at an even height around the edges, forming a bowl shape.

verb

  1. To roll or carry smoothly on, or as on, wheels.

  2. To pelt or strike with anything rolled.

  3. intransitive

    To play bowling or a similar game.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A roughly hemispherical container used to hold, mix or present food, such as salad, fruit or soup, or other items.

Used this way, bowl is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • bowlful , rarer, so it draws attention

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Quantity

large bowlsmall bowl

Ball / postseason

bowl game

Other combinations

mixing bowlsugar bowlsalad bowlpunch bowltoilet bowl

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • bowlsnounPlural form

    A bowling game played on a level lawn with biased wooden balls that are rolled at a jack.

  • bowlingnounInflected form

    A game in which balls are rolled at an object or group of objects with the aim of knocking them over or moving them.

  • bowlernounInflected form

    A cricketer who delivers the ball to the batsman in cricket.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • bowl oververbCompound term

    Cause to overturn from an upright or normal position.

  • bowler hatnounCompound term

    A felt hat that is round and hard with a narrow brim.

  • bowling alleynounCompound term

    A building that contains several alleys for bowling.

  • bowling ballnounCompound term

    A large ball with finger holes used in the sport of bowling.

  • bowling equipmentnounCompound term

    Equipment used in bowling.

  • bowling leaguenounCompound term

    A league of bowling teams.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.