ˈpunch-bowl
[f. punch n.3 + bowl n.1]
1. A bowl in which the ingredients of punch are mixed, and from which it is served with a ladle.
| 1692 Luttrell Brief Rel. (1857) II. 624 Subscriptions are making in the citty for a gold punch bowle of good value, to be presented to admirall Russell. 1716 B. Church Hist. Philip's War (1865) I. 134 A Valley, in form of something shap'd like a Punch-bole. 1791 Boswell Johnson an. 1776, 23 Mar., Garrick sometimes used to take him [Johnson] off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, looking round the company, and crying ‘Who's for Poonsh?’ 1881 Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet i. viii, They..get what pleasure they can out of a punch-bowl. |
2. attrib. Resembling a punch-bowl. Hence n., (a) A round deep hollow between hills or in a hillside: cf. bowl n.1 3 c. † (b) A kind of wide river-boat.
| 1855 J. R. Leifchild Cornwall Mines 27 The whole business is confined to the interior of the punch-bowl hollow. 1869 E. A. Parkes Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3) 289 Among hills, the unhealthy spots are enclosed valleys, punch-bowls. 1902 Words of Eyewitness 251 On the high ridges..more Boers,..scanning the punchbowl below them with field-glasses. 1870 G. W. Dasent Annals I. xii. 140 Then there was the water, and the funnies, cutters, wherries, punchbowls, and half⁓deckers that thronged the river daily. |