snowballs

verb

present tense third-person singular of snowball
as in increases
to become greater in extent, volume, amount, or number the little problems we ignored began to snowball into huge headaches

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of snowballs The attack is followed by inflammation and swelling that together cause damage that snowballs to complete joint destruction, which can progress rapidly. — Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 31 July 2026 That metaphysical connection soon snowballs into a mounting existential threat when Mia (Sophie Wilde) allows her best friend's eager little brother to have one round with the hand, after which his body is never the same. — Dennis Perkins, Entertainment Weekly, 31 Oct. 2025 Sometimes that snowballs for a defense. — Kirk Kenney, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Sep. 2025 That then snowballs into a full-length feature Hollywood horror film. — Aidin Vaziri, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Feb. 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for snowballs
  1. increases
  2. rises
  3. swells
  4. accelerates
  5. climbs
Verb
  • That’s harder to find in fashion these days, as the comparable speed of digital culture increases trend turnover and even algorithmic advertising struggles to keep up with what looking empirically cool means.
    — Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 6 Oct. 2026
  • While productivity increases dramatically, consumption often grows even faster.
    — Sudipto Dasgupta, Forbes.com, 6 Oct. 2026
Definition of increases
Verb
  • As the cost of petrochemical feedstocks for virgin synthetics rises by as much as 60 percent or more, the price difference between virgin and bio-based options is getting smaller.
    — Arthur Zaczkiewicz, Footwear News, 5 Oct. 2026
  • As atmospheric carbon rises to levels beyond precedent in human history and consequently raises the global temperature to levels unprecedented on the human scale, the importance of places where carbon is sequestered becomes ever greater.
    — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 5 Oct. 2026
Definition of rises
Verb
  • But when an event swells to the size of a city — the New York City Marathon had nearly 60,000 finishers last year — climate risk is no longer solely a personal matter.
    — Vibhu Krishna, STAT, 2 Oct. 2026
  • There is an art to stylizing a position of interrogation in excess of its biomechanics, an art to how lockstep beats a cadence while a unit swells into an enveloping arc.
    — Sophie Landres, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of swells
Verb
  • Communities are being asked to do more with less as climate change accelerates, and the skills needed to care for these places are being lost.
    — Francesca Aton, ARTnews.com, 2 Oct. 2026
  • This swelling warps the battery’s internal structure and accelerates degradation, making large-format cells unsafe and short-lived.
    — Aman Tripathi, Interesting Engineering, 2 Oct. 2026
Definition of accelerates
Verb
  • Frequency climbs, engagement slips and the platform starts favoring other ads long before the marketing team concludes anything needs to change.
    — Matt Jayson, Forbes.com, 2 Oct. 2026
  • Dusk comes in three sizes, and the weight climbs with the shoe.
    — New Atlas, New Atlas, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of climbs

Browse Nearby Words

snowballing
snowballs
snowbank
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Snowballs.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/snowballs. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.

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