[See BALL sb.1 5.]
1. A ball, usually of iron, to be thrown from a cannon. (Also collect. and as pl.)
1663. Butler, Hud., I. II. 66/872. Heavy brunt of Cannon-ball.
1704. Lond. Gaz., No. 4077/2. Colonel Fox was killed with a Cannon-Ball.
1704. Collect. Voy. & Trav., III. 764/2. 800 Cannon-ball.
1848. W. K. Kelly, trans. L. Blanc’s Hist. Ten Y., II. 265. Being battered down with cannon balls.
b. Hist. A nickname for the hard-headed remnant of the protectionist party in England.
1858. Sat. Rev., 30 Oct., 413/2. The amendment … which sealed for ever the fate of Protection, was carried [in 1852] with only fifty dissentient voices—the celebrated ‘cannon-balls.’
2. Cannon-ball fruit, the globular woody fruit of a South American tree, Couroupita guianensis (N. O. Lecythidaceæ) or Cannon-ball Tree.
1839. Penny Cycl., XIII. 381/1. Cannon-ball tree.
1866. Treas. Bot., 342. The Cannon-ball fruit: its shell is used as a drinking vessel, and its pulp when fresh is of an agreeable flavour.
1885. Lady Brassey, The Trades, 112. Perhaps the most remarkable of the order of Lecythidaceæ … was the so-called ‘Cannon-ball tree.’
