bowlder

Related to bowlder: bowdlerizing

bowl·der

(bōl′dər)

Variant of boulder.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

boul•der

(ˈboʊl dər)

n.

a detached and rounded or worn rock, esp. a large one.

[1610–20; Middle English bulderston < Scandinavian]

Boul•der

(ˈboʊl dər)

n.

a city in N Colorado. 75,990.

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Noun

bowlder - a large smooth mass of rock detached from its place of origin

boulder

glacial boulder - a boulder that has been carried by a glacier to a place far distant from its place of origin

river boulder - a boulder that has been carried by a river to a place remote from its place of origin

rock, stone - a lump or mass of hard consolidated mineral matter; "he threw a rock at me"

shore boulder - a boulder found on a shore remote from its place of origin

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At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with truly apelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her wings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled down upon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that side of the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race.

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He hid behind a great bowlder and fell to listening.

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They were regarded as a perfect protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but you could read on it at a mile distance:

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From the top of this bowlder the gleam of something bright caught my eye, and, raising my hand, I found that it came from the silver cigarette-case which he used to carry.

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It contained many large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills.

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There were overturned wagons like sun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.

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These elevated summits consist of rounded cones, between which the soil is bestrewn with erratic blocks of stone and gravelly bowlders. The most abrupt declivity of these mountains confronts the Zanzibar coast, but the western slopes are merely inclined planes.

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A few loose bowlders, which had detached themselves from the sides of the depression to set up an independent existence at the bottom, had dammed up the pathway, here and there, but their stony repose had nothing in it of the stillness of death.

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Last of all came the catapults, those great engines of destruction which hurled two hundred pound bowlders with mighty force against the walls of beleaguered castles.