bowl

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A large wooden ball weighted or slightly flattened so as to roll with a bias.
• noun A roll or throw of this ball, as in bowling.
• noun A revolving cylinder or drum in a machine.
• intransitive verb To participate in a game of bowling.
• intransitive verb To throw or roll a ball in bowling.
• intransitive verb To hurl a cricket ball from one end of the pitch toward the batsman at the other, keeping the arm straight throughout the delivery.
• intransitive verb To move quickly and smoothly, especially by rolling.
• intransitive verb To throw or roll (a ball).
• intransitive verb To achieve (a specified score) by bowling.
• intransitive verb To perform (a specified amount, as a string or game) in bowling.
• intransitive verb To move quickly and smoothly by or as if by rolling.
• intransitive verb To meet or strike with or as if with the force of a rapidly rolling object.
• noun A hemispherical vessel, wider than it is deep, used for holding food or fluids.
• noun The contents of such a vessel.
• noun A drinking goblet.
• noun A bowl-shaped part, as of a spoon or pipe.
• noun A bowl-shaped topographic depression.
• noun A bowl-shaped stadium or outdoor theater.
• noun Football Any of various postseason games played between specially selected teams, especially at the college level.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The main cylinder or drum of a calico-printing machine, against which are pressed the engraved copper rollers; a calender-roller.
• noun An antifriction roller in the pedal-motion of the feeding-device of a cotton-scutcher or picking-machine.
• To play with bowls or at bowling: as, “challenge her to bowl,” Shak., L. L. L., iv.
• To roll a bowl, as in the game of bowls.
• To deliver the ball to be played by the batsman at cricket.
• To move horizontally, with a rapid and easy motion, like a ball: as, the carriage bowled along.
• To roll or trundle, as a bowl.
• To pelt with or as with bowls.
• noun A low-standing concave vessel used for various domestic and other purposes, chiefly for holding liquids or liquid food.
• noun More specifically
• noun A large drinking-cup; a goblet: in this sense now chiefly figurative, as an emblem of festivity or dissipation.
• noun Anything having the general shape or use of a bowl, as a natural depression in the ground, the pound or central portion of a fishing-weir, the hollow or containing part of a vessel or utensil having a stem or a handle, etc.: as, the bowl of a chalice, a spoon, or a tobacco-pipe.
• noun A ball; any sphere or globe.
• noun A large solid ball of hard wood used in playing the game of bowls on a level plat of greensward called a bowling-green, or
• noun the game of skittles or ninepins on a long, floored surface of wood called a bowling-alley. (See bowls.)
• noun A turn at a game of bowls: as, it is his bowl next.
• noun 4 (pron. böl). A marble used by boys in play; in the plural, the game itself.
• noun In a knitting-machine, the roller or antifriction wheel on which the carriage traverses.
• noun One of the buoys or floats used by herring-fishers about Yarmouth, England, to support, the drift-net and keep its edge uppermost. These bowls are colored to mark the divisions of the fleet of nets.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A concave vessel of various forms (often approximately hemispherical), to hold liquids, etc.
• noun Specifically, a drinking vessel for wine or other spirituous liquors; hence, convivial drinking.
• noun The contents of a full bowl; what a bowl will hold.
• noun The hollow part of a thing.