Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Ball of fire   /bɔl əv fˈaɪər/   Listen
Ball of fire

noun
1.
A highly energetic and indefatigable person.  Synonyms: fireball, human dynamo, powerhouse.
2.
Someone whose career progresses rapidly.  Synonyms: go-getter, whiz-kid, whizz-kid.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Ball of fire" Quotes from Famous Books



... lightning-bugs they seemed, with their dim white lamps rattling around in the storm. It was nearly all night then. God and his sunlight seemed to have forsaken Alaska. Once every twenty-four hours a little ball of fire, red, round, and remote, swung across the canon, dimly lighted their lunch-tables, and then disappeared behind the great glacier that guards the gateway ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... tender, than if she had given way to tempests of tears. A man could comfort and console a weeping stray of the desert, but not a girl who sat with unbound hair under the yucca and called messages to the ghosts until the sun,—a flaming ball of fire,—sank ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... same moment the light, that I had took to be Hatteras, rolled slowly, like a ball of fire, along the jib-top-sail stay to the top-mast head, and then I knew it was a St. Elmo's fire, a thing I'd heard ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... death which is the result of the rending of a man away from the Source of life, then the remission of the penalty is precisely identical with the uninterrupted flow of the divine love. The mists of autumnal mornings drape the sky in gloom, and turn the blessed sun itself into a lurid ball of fire. Sweep away the mists, and its rays again pour out beneficence. The man who sins, piles up, as it were, a cloud-bank between himself and God, and forgiveness, which is the remission of the penalty, is the sweeping away of the cloud-bank, and the pouring out of sunshine upon a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... emerging from the caverns, they came, they said, into a world where all was light and beauty. It was directly over that part of the cavern where our tribe dwelt. They saw a great round ball of fire, which gave light and heat to the earth, and whose beams it was which had shot down through the fissures of the rock, partially illumining the cavern. The earth above them they had found covered with green, and scented with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... at eight o'clock, when the sun had sunk like a ball of fire in the west, and the Blue Mountains, above which hovered puffs of smoke from the bursting shrapnel, were bathed in the golden evening light and the valley became gradually veiled in darkness, the crushing news came from Baker City ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... guidance over the trackless waste, yet never for an instant did Mukoki or Wabigoon falter. The stars began burning brilliantly in the sky; far away the red edge of the moon rose over this world of ice and snow and forest, throbbing and palpitating like a bursting ball of fire, as one sees it now and then in the glory of ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... single glance at the great ball of fire over their heads; nine times the size it always seemed at home, it contrasted sharply with the rather small ball ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... was the simultaneous exclamation of all. A long chain of lightning and a heavy ball of fire seemed to shoot from the sky, lighting up the whole sea, revealing, and at the same time striking, in its descent, a full-rigged brig, which, like themselves, was scudding before the gale under bare poles, a few cables' length off their port beam. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... breakfast already placed. He rang the bell, and walked to the window, to observe the appearance of the morning. A heavy snow had fallen during the night; and the sun, ascended to its meridian, shone through the thick atmosphere like a ball of fire. All seemed comfortless without; and turning back to the warm hearth, which was blazing at the other end of the room, he was reseating himself, when Jenkins ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... chillun," she said, "me and my sister one night was comin' from spring. Twas in de winter time and jus' as cold, twas dark and I had de light. Sister say: 'Babe, don't let dat light go out.' Jus' den I seed it—a horse's head all spread out in fore! A big ball of fire! I yelled: 'Oh, sister, look at de horse wid a head of fire!' She knock me out for dead! She grab dat light and run home and lef' me in de wood. When I come to I run to my mother crying and she say: 'Now Nancy, you know you kin see 'em but you ought not to tell ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... Thorndyke's finger with his eyes. At first he thought that it was a comet moving across the sky and reflected in the water; but, on glancing above, he saw his mistake. It looked, at first, like a great ball of fire rolling along the bottom of the lake with a stream of ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... till I finish cleaning my gold watch?" and the little rabbit set to work, and before long he could see his face in it and the Jay Bird's too, for Mr. Merry Sun made that little gold watch shine like a ball of fire. ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory

... sun like a brassy ball of fire hangs low upon the threatening horizon; the next, it has dropped into the belt of grayish mist that marks the earth's end and darkness has spread its silent, ominous mantle over the forest. Almost, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... of buildings across the square glowed red briefly as the beam from the Blaster caught it; glowed red and then burst into a ball of fire. O'Shaughnessy's mouth was open wide, his chinless face resting on the edge of the sandbox and his little black bead eyes were as large ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith

... lightish, and one of the Sailors was got into the Skuttle (so I think they call it) at the Main-Top-Mast, looking out if he could see any Land; a certain Ball of Fire began to stand by him, which is the worst Sign in the World to Sailors, if it be single; but a very good one, if double. The Antients believed these to be ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... half-basalt peak. From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the northern sky. At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a pale azure, clear of mists. North of us: the sun's disk, like a ball of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon. From the heart of the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent bouquets. Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us to the south and east: an immense shore, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... smiled proudly. He looked up toward the ball of fire sailing above them and a change came over his face. "We might miss the choral," he said wistfully. "They won't wait, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... the Duke. "It isn't the mosquitoes or the bells: that ball of fire that's shining through the window makes a perfect oven of ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... it all was that we shook hands most heartily with the captain next day; and that evening as the doctor, Jack Penny, Jimmy, Gyp, and I stood on the beach, we could see the schooner rounding a point of the great island, with the great red ball of fire—the sun—turning her sails into gold, till the darkness came down suddenly, as it does in these parts; and then, though there was the loud buzzing of hundreds of voices about the huts, we English folk seemed to feel that we were alone as it were, and cut off from all the world, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... no good humor, and flew out to the wave, where he found a mass of fire floating there. He was a coward, such as all mist-made creatures are, and he feared to bring in the great ball of fire, yet he dared not disobey the command of a superior being like Raven. So he tore off a mouthful only, and that is how he came to be so badly burned. Had he caught hold of the whole mass of flame, the outside of which really had been ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... lilac-tinted mountains, hung like a great suspended ball of fire. The cloudless sky glared like a furnace. Deep purple shadows crept into the canyons slashing the mountain range. The yellow dust-waves and the mirages disappeared with the going down of the sun. Still we were carried on and on. We would ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... a single drop of water and seen the sun? the whole of that brilliant ball of fire there in one tiny drop of water? Well, there's one word on this first leaf of the Book which contains the clear reflection, sharply outlined, of the whole creation story; ah! yes, more than that, of ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... quarters as he descended. The effect was exactly what I had anticipated; his thick fur, covered in every part with oil, was immediately in a blaze, and burnt with such rapidity, that before he could recover his feet on deck, he was like an immense ball of fire. I retreated to the companion-hatch to watch his motions. His first act was to return to the quarter-deck and roll himself in the oil, with an idea of quenching the flames, but this added fuel to them, and the animal roaring ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... feeling so free and happy after her long captivity, that she quite forgot Father Noah and the errand upon which she had been sent. Up and up she went, higher than the sun, until at last she saw him rising far beneath her, a beautiful ball of fire, more dazzling, more wonderful than ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... catching the rough hands as they pulled at the profusion of redness. "Don't, ye air tearin' it out by the roots, and it looks like—like the sun when it air goin' down in one ball of fire. It air beautiful." ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... she led him up the ancient stairway, and the little doorways of the cliff dwellings showed black, for the moon had slipped above the far hills and shone, a dulled ball of fire through the sultry haze. Enough light it threw on the white cliffs to show any moving creature, and Ka-yemo glanced fearfully towards the portal of the star, for surely a movement ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... The sun, a bright ball of fire setting the heavens all ablaze, was sinking into the ocean astern when Peter made his way on deck; the coast with its sandy bays, rocky cliffs, and lofty headlands, their western sides tinged with a ruddy glow appearing on the left, while the calm ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... this spring, and the first trip I ever made across this desert. We hed been six days from Yuma to this place: the sun all the time like a ball of fire, and the sand so hot it burnt one's naked feet to a blister. Not a drop of water hed we hed for our animals for three days, and only a teaspoonful ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... a bit of a brook. June scooped up the water in her hands, and Hungry lapped it with her pink tongue. But there was no dinner to be found, and no sign of Massa Linkum; the sun was like a great ball of fire above the tree-tops, and the child grew faint ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Arcot replied into the intercom. The sun was setting, and the blazing red star was lighting the ship, making it seem like a ball of fire when still and a flashing streak of red light when ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... breath of air stirring to cool the oppressive atmosphere. The earth and sky were suffused with a bright, red light, which gradually died away into a dim, purplish haze, through which the sun ascended like a ball of fire; while every blade and leaf hung motionless, as if awaiting breathlessly the coming of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... wore away rather monotonously, for not a living thing was to be seen, excepting occasionally a small Dyak habitation, with its small strip of clearing whereon the owners grew their "padi" or rice. At last, as the sun was setting like a ball of fire behind the distant mountains, we heard the faint sound of gongs, which announced that we ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... there came a loud, rushing, roaring sound, like a passenger train close by, going at full speed, and there in the west was a meteor! Its flight was from the southwest to the northeast, parallel with the horizon, and low down. Its head, or body, looked like a huge ball of fire, and it left behind a long, immense tail of brilliant white, that lighted up all the western heavens. While yet in full view, it exploded with a crash like a near-by clap of thunder, there was a wide, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... for rural pleasures, for this place especially, with its rich foliage and peeps of scenic peace. The prospect of an escape from it inspired thoughts of a loveable round of life where the sun was not a naked ball of fire, but a friend clothed in woodland; where park and meadow swept to well-known features East and West; and distantly circling hills, and the hearts of poor cottagers too—sympathy with whom assured her of goodness—were familiar, homely to the dweller in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Ball of fire" :   actor, doer, self-starter, worker



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com