bobble1
/ˈbɒb(ə)l
/noun
1A small ball made of strands of wool used as a decoration on a hat or on furnishings: a woollen ski hat with a bobble on top [as modifier]: British a bobble hat...
- Early collections included stripy scarves in shades of Pinky and Perky, tiny handbags in boiled wool and bobble hats straight out of Ladybird story-books.
- He was encased in a huge padded jacket topped with luminous orange bobble hat.
- He used to wear a bobble hat with a CND badge on it.
1.1 (bobbles) Small plastic balls attached to a circular piece of elastic, used for fastening girls' hair.Inside was a bizarre store of old magazines and books, plumbing bits, bolts, screws and electric wires, a very large number of hair bobbles and just about everything else bar the kitchen sink....
- Another woman eats an ice cream as her young daughter eyes the sparkly hair bobbles and shiny combs in a shop window.
- I shake my head again, faster this time so my hair bobbles click against each other.
Derivatives
bobbly
- But it may fit the bill as far as timeless ‘paradise’ goes: coral-fringed islands of bobbly green rainforest with tall, slender coconut palms arching through.
- It's lost its grass, it's dried out, and it's becoming very uneven and very bobbly.
- This is why the children of the middle-class intelligentsia are the ones you see at playgroup in the hand-me-down jeans and the bobbly, seen-better-days cardigans.
Origin
1920s: diminutive of bob2.
Rhymes
bobble2
/ˈbɒb(ə)l/informal
verb
1 [no object] Move with a feeble or irregular bouncing motion: some of those goals have bobbled in off the post...
- He likened them to boats in a harbour that could bobble, swirl and move about, changing configuration as circumstances demanded and the design evolved.
- Yet again, though, Myshall went up field to goal, Nuala Quirke's 13 th minute 20m shot from the left of goal bobbling on the ground before entering the net just inside the far post.
- Pepper album to Radio London, a station bobbling on the waves somewhere off the coast near Margate.
2 [with object] North American Mishandle (a ball): Andy bobbled the ball, so his throw home was too late...
- We wanted to get a shot for Wells, if we could, but the play got all screwed up when he bobbled the ball and had to pass it off to LJ.
- Not only were there no errors, but not a single ball was bobbled.
- Japan's Kazue Ito was charges with an error on the play for bobbling the ball.
noun
1A feeble or irregular bouncing motion.After a lap of yellow, Bonilla enjoyed the point for just one more lap; a slight bobble in Turn Five (the one corner that's second gear) meant Prey got the run and passed him up the long backstraight....
- ‘Apart from a slight bobble, I turned in a solid routine,’ she says.
- He laid it off to Ilkley captain David Knox whose low shot took a bobble and skipped over the arms of the diving Dobson.
2North American A mishandling of a ball: a once-a-season bobble en route to a breakaway jam...
- Some of his errors are bobbles that seemingly are caused because he's worrying about the throw he'll have to make.
- After striking out Trot Nixon on a nasty cutter, Manny Ramirez's grounder short-hopped Rodriguez at third, and his bobble allowed the tying run to score.
- Andruw Jones looked sheepish Sunday morning attempting to explain his bobble of a fly ball in Saturday's Game 4, which he turned into an acrobatic catch with some quick reflexes.
Origin
Early 19th century: frequentative of bob1.