Definitions

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

  • noun A small ball of chewing gum with a colored sugar coating.
  • noun One of the round prickly fruits of a sweet gum tree.

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

  • noun A piece of chewing gum in the shape of a ball, usually covered with a colored glaze of sugar. They are often sold in a small, special-purpose coin-operated vending machine called a gumball machine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Chewing gum sold as a ball usually coated with colored hard sugar.
  • noun slang A silly, laughable person.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a ball of chewing gum with a coating of colored sugar

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The Homies -- tiny LA Chicano gangsta figurines sold in gumball machines -- are drawing fire from the LAPD, who want their sale discontinued on the grounds tha they provide a poor role model for Hispanic children.

    Boing Boing: November 11, 2001 - November 17, 2001 Archives 2001

  • You will not come across manufacturers of several different types of vending machines, such as gumball machines and drink machines.

    We Blog A Lot 2008

  • (One of my favorite) Use the vacuum and find items in the vacuum (some things are not worth money such as gumball, eraser, etc.) (things that are worth a LOT are glowing rock, golf ball

    unknown title 2009

  • The only noise was from the swallowing of chocolate and the snapping of sugar sticks and the crinkling of rice paper wrapper and the scraping of teeth against a gumball.

    Ruby Lu Star of the Star of the Show Lenore Look 2011

  • Do you think I should buy Twizzlers or a big red gumball?

    Why I Fired My Broker 2009

  • If you pay attention to the pictures you can see that there are a lot of details, like the gumball machine, a bottle of Coke and the New York Times paper sitting on one of the chairs.

    Living Inside a Cube by Jose Kos 2009

  • When Music From Big Pink came out, people could hear mountain music in there, gospel music, blues, rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, and all these things like it was a big gumball of music, and it was because we had really woodsheded it and educated ourselves in trying to hone our skills.

    Mike Ragogna: How To Become Clairvoyant: A Conversation with Robbie Robertson Mike Ragogna 2011

  • When Lee returned to Seattle, he was greeted by a huge box of Google swag, including a basketball, a chair, and a coin-operated gumball machine with a Google logo.

    In the Plex Steven Levy 2011

  • When Music From Big Pink came out, people could hear mountain music in there, gospel music, blues, rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, and all these things like it was a big gumball of music, and it was because we had really woodsheded it and educated ourselves in trying to hone our skills.

    Mike Ragogna: How To Become Clairvoyant: A Conversation with Robbie Robertson Mike Ragogna 2011

  • By noon, there were one thousand people and it seemed that I gotten the gumball count right.

    Adam Klugman: Live from OccupyPortland! Adam Klugman 2011

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