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say it: MAWTH-bawl
mothball is a noun and verb meaning "a small sphere of camphor or naphthalene used to keep moths away from stored clothing". It carries 2 recorded senses.
a small sphere of camphor or naphthalene used to keep moths away from stored clothing
put into long-term storage
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for mothball come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.