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A ball of snow, usually one made in the hand and thrown for amusement in a snowball fight; also a larger ball of snow made by rolling a snowball around in snow that sticks to it and increases its diameter.
(figuratively) Something that snowballs (grows rapidly out of control).
2005, Eldad Ben-Yosef, The Evolution of the US Airline Industry:
Representatives of the small airlines that felt betrayed by Brown's policy started a political snowball rolling, resulting in the Airmail Act of 1934...
A sex act involving passing ejaculated semen from one person's mouth to another's.
Scandal, with her, did not lose any of its usual snowball propensities, of gathering as it went.
Verb
snowball (third-person singular simple presentsnowballs, present participlesnowballing, simple past and past participlesnowballed)
(intransitive) To rapidly grow out of proportion or control.
The high unemployment rates quickly snowballed into a major budget problem for the government.
2023 January 11, Philip Haigh, “Comment: The worst chaos for 40 years”, in RAIL, number 974, page 4:
There's a further knock-on effect from cancelling trains. It's not unusual for train crew diagrams to include a period 'on the cushions', travelling as a passenger to get staff from one train to the next. Cancel this train and it's likely the crew won't reach their next train, so this too is cancelled. Disruption snowballs and diagrams become harder to deliver.