1A small coloured rubber bag which is inflated with air and then sealed at the neck, used as a child's toy or a decoration.

2A large bag filled with hot air or gas to make it rise in the air, typically one carrying a basket for passengers.

3A rounded outline in which the words or thoughts of characters in a comic strip or cartoon are written.

4A large rounded drinking glass, used especially for brandy.

5Scottish informal A stupid person.

1Swell out in a spherical shape.

1. 1.1 (of an amount of money spent or owed) increase rapidly.
   the company's debt has ballooned in the last five years

   Example sentencesExamples

   • That collision of big tax cuts and ballooning deficits has set the stage for an acrimonious debate over how large a tax cut the U.S. can afford.
   • Beween 1994 and 2002, spending in the state ballooned out of control, rising an average of 13.4 percent per biennium.
   • Its average employee was obese, ballooning health-care costs.
   • It has ballooned out from $290 bn in 1999 to a forecast $560 bn this year.
   • The domestic debt has ballooned to $10 trillion from $7 trillion as of April this year as the government continues to borrow from local banks to finance its budget deficit.
   • On the one hand, ballooning Credit and a glut of liquidity creation were a boon inspiring astonishing asset and earnings growth.
   • New York Medicaid costs have ballooned by $13 billion since Albany passed a health-care ‘reform’ act four years ago, supposedly to restrain spending.
   • This rapidly compounded their debt, which has ballooned to £384,000.
   • Yet now they not only refuse to do the right thing again, they want to do the wrong thing (cut taxes and balloon the deficit) over and over again.
   • I am determined to run a campaign on the great challenges facing this country - from creating jobs, to solving our health care crisis to getting our nation's ballooning deficit under control.
   • Broad money supply has ballooned $943 billion during the past 52 weeks.
   • Currently, money market fund assets have ballooned to $1.819 trillion, having increased $18 billion just last week.
   • As Giscard's vision expanded, costs ballooned from $40 million to $70 million to $100 million.
   • By 2004, the figure is projected to balloon another 28 percent to $372 million.
   • But now a collapsing bubble transforms ballooning revenues into ballooning budget deficits.
   • The amount has ballooned from millions to billions.
   • This expansion is a microcosm of the U.S. financial sector, with ballooning assets of indeterminable true economic value.
   • But, in any case, one can either have real stimulus, which might get some credit for buoying the economy, and also ballooning the deficit.
   • As for fiscal discipline, look what happened: Treasury estimates of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement ballooned from £28 bn to £35 bn.
   • The country's capital stock ballooned to reach a level that the economy could not support.

   Synonyms

   increase rapidly, soar, rocket, shoot up, escalate, mount, surge, spiral, grow rapidly, rise rapidly

   informal go through the ceiling, go through the roof, skyrocket
2. 1.2 (of a person) increase rapidly in weight.
   I ate out of boredom and I just ballooned up

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Prudie would not quibble with any man who is turned off by a woman who balloons up several sizes from what she was when they initially got together.
   • Put me in front of the most delicious buffet in the world, and I will balloon.
   • By the time I turned 31, I had ballooned to 252 pounds.
   • She freely told Stevenson her figure had ballooned after she stopped taking a dietary supplement.
   • Sadly he was put down when liver disease saw him balloon to twice his size.
   • During Ali's retirement, he ballooned up to over 280 pounds.
   • With his weight ballooning, he began working in the livery yard of former jockey, the late Anthony Powell.
   • The word on the street is that he has ballooned up like a float in New York's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
   • By the time we got back to the U.S., these take-no-prisoners tactics were deeply ingrained, and dining on starchy American foods, we ballooned to enormous size.
   • Jeffries had ballooned up to 300 lbs during his retirement and training was not easy anymore for a 35-year-old man.
   • Zellweger again ballooned to a size 14 for the plump part by bingeing on pizza and shunning all exercise.
   • I guess mom forgot all together because working a nearly-twelve hour day, or more, makes it hard for you to keep track of your kids or even care if they're ballooning.
   • At eight, two years after the birth of his half-sister, his mother had ballooned into a blimp.
   • Add to that the fact that during this period she had ballooned to an unhealthy 290 pounds.
   • She had ballooned up a good thirty pounds; her ankles were swollen and just carrying around her huge stomach made her ill.
   • I ballooned out to 96 kg just after Christmas, and whilst I never looked fat, I really didn't look lean either.
   • Clothes retailers are reacting to the trend and Gap is introducing bigger sizes for Britain's ballooning children.
   • In the final days of Whitepaws' confinement, when her abdomen ballooned out beneath her, she abruptly abandoned the new premises.
   • I unwrapped the towels to discover my baby had ballooned up nicely.
   • I'd ballooned to about a size 28/30 (from Evans too) on my bum and I was about a size 26 in blouses.

2British (with reference to a ball) lob or be lobbed high in the air.

3Travel by hot-air balloon.