Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A lottery game popular in France and in the southern United States.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
lottery in whichwinning tickets are drawn from arevolving drum
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a lottery in which tickets are drawn from a revolving drum
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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These pantaloons were made of a goat's skin; the long white wool, inches in length, left on and hanging down below the knees of the man, gave him a Pan-like look, and with the word tombola, suggested the lines of that good old song -- save the maledictory part of it:
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862 Devoted To Literature and National Policy Various
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Tickets for a chance at this A tombola is a kind of raffle. miscellaneous collection sold for one dollar each.
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The tombola was a grand, an overwhelming success; without one dollar of outlay -- the buildings and necessary printing bad been donated -- we made six thousand dollars.
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But behind the trays of iced fairy cakes and lovingly labelled tombola items, prospective parents are scouring the stalls for clues of the school's strengths and weaknesses.
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Even the act of pulling names from a tombola has a liberal helping of hoopla in the world of football.
European clubs' desire for greater autonomy could wreck World Cup 2011
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In heart-rending scenes in Waiting for Superman, which was directed by An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim, parents and children are shown watching as numbered balls are pulled out of a tombola.
Can Geoffrey Canada rescue America's ailing schools? Barack Obama hopes so Paul Harris in Harlem 2010
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A sort of jaunty 1920s army major: monocle, huge moustache, laugh like a tombola full of excitable ducks.
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You expected someone to announce that there would be a tombola on the upper deck and a film presentation of The Great Escape in the ship's cinema.
House of Lords and electoral reform: The kill bill all-nighter | Simon Hoggart's sketch 2011
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Without charity there would be no bathing in cold custard, no public displays of depilation and no outlet for tombola.
The Book of Other People by Zadie Smith (editor): Book summary 2010
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Boxing Day, we spent in a similar way except that instead of a concert, we had a tombola.
Work Camp 11022 GW 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word tombola
The intranet at my workplace mentioned a fundraiser at our company's UK office that featured "Cake, gift, craft and book stalls, a tombola, nail painting" etc. I don't think I'd ever heard of a tombola before - the OED online describes it as "A kind of lottery resembling lotto," which seems slightly vague to me, though looking at the OED entry for lotto sheds some light: "A game played with cards divided into numbered and blank squares and numbered discs to be drawn on the principle of a lottery. Each player has one or more cards before him; one of the discs is drawn from a bag, and its number called; a counter is placed on the square that has the same number, the player who first gets one row covered being the winner."
July 21, 2010