1 a small bag made of very thin rubber that becomes larger and rounder when you fill it with air or gas. Balloons are brightly coloured and used as decorations or toys:
to blow up / burst / pop a balloon * My balloon has burst! * A thousand balloons were released to mark the event.
2 (also hot-air balloon) a large balloon made of strong fabric that is filled with hot air or gas to make it rise in the air, usually carrying a basket for passengers
IDIOMS
when the balloon goes up (BrE, informal) when the trouble that you are expecting begins:
We have to get out of here before the balloon goes up!
moreatLEAD
verb [V]
1 ~ (out / up) to suddenly swell out or get bigger:
Her skirt ballooned out in the wind. * Unemployment ballooned to fourteen per cent.
2 (usually go ballooning) to travel in a HOT-AIRBALLOON as a sport
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for balloon is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is balloon a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, balloon is tagged as noun.
Does balloon appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — balloon appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
