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Being from Canada, I’m very familiar with snowballs. When I was young, my friends and I used to have snowball fights. This was a normal thing growing up in a cold country. Of course, usually the word “snowball” is a noun, but sometimes it can be used as a verb. That is what I’d like to write about today.

The verb, to “snowball” means for a situation to get bigger and bigger as time goes by. The reason the word “snowball” is used is because if we make a small snowball and roll it down a hill of snow, more snow will stick to it, and it will become much larger. Let me give you some examples of how to use “snowball” as a verb:

I made the mistake of offering to help a guy at my office with his report. Since then, the situation has completely snowballed. Now many of my co-workers are asking me for my help all the time!

I gave my son a Pokemon toy for his birthday, but now I regret doing that. It started off as one toy, but now the situation has totally snowballed. He has started collecting the toys, and now he wants a new one every week!

My friend started to write a short story about his family but soon after that, it really snowballed. He ended up writing a 400 page book about them.

The verb “snowball” is almost always used in the past tense and is usually used to describe negative situations that have gotten bigger and bigger over time. However it can be used to describe neutral situations as well, such as with the last example about the story becoming a book.