Library / English Dictionary

BALE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A large bundle bound for storage or transport

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("bale" is a kind of...):

bundle; sheaf (a package of several things tied together for carrying or storing)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "bale"):

hay bale (a bale of hay)

Derivation:

bale (make into a bale)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A city in northwestern Switzerland

Synonyms:

Bale; Basel; Basle

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

city; metropolis; urban center (a large and densely populated urban area; may include several independent administrative districts)

Holonyms ("Bale" is a part of...):

Schweiz; Suisse; Svizzera; Swiss Confederation; Switzerland (a landlocked federal republic in central Europe)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make into a bale

Example:

bale hay

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "bale" is one way to...):

accumulate; amass; collect; compile; hoard; pile up; roll up (get or gather together)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

bale (a large bundle bound for storage or transport)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Young as I was, I knew that it was here, in the forest of merchant shipping, in the bales which swung up to the warehouse windows, in the loaded waggons which roared over the cobblestones, that the power of Britain lay.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in question.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Come, Watkin lad, throw the bales over Laura's back!

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was impossible to bale it, but he was calmer now and managed to catch them in his tin bucket.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I have here my bales of cloth which I carry to Cahors—woe worth the day that ever I started on such an errand!

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You do with him as you would with a sack of potatoes or a bale of hay.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

His servant, as tall as himself, but gaunt and raw-boned, had swung the bales on the back of one mule, while the merchant mounted upon the other and rode to join the party.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Three times we have had to draw, and once at La Reolle we stood over our wool-bales, Watkin and I, and we laid about us for as long as a man might chant a litany, slaying one rogue and wounding two others.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There is one, Francois Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were to line the roads like yonder poplars.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Heavy and slow is he by nature, and is not to be brought into battle for the sake of a lady's eyelash or the twang of a minstrel's string, like the hotter blood of the south. But ma foi! lay hand on his wool-bales, or trifle with his velvet of Bruges, and out buzzes every stout burgher, like bees from the tee-hole, ready to lay on as though it were his one business in life.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)