Word.ws English Dictionary

bowled a googly

bowled a googly is the simple past and past participle of bowl a googly.

Meaning of bowl a googly

Verb

bowl a googly (third-person singular simple present bowls a googly, present participle bowling a googly, simple past and past participle bowled a googly)

  1. (UK, figuratively, idiomatic, transitive) to surprise (someone); to introduce (to someone) something unexpected, underhand or requiring a quick reaction or correction.
    • Fred bowled me a googly when he asked me to explain those statistics in the meeting.
  2. (ambitransitive) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bowl, googly.
    Synonyms:
    catch unawares, catch off guard, wrong-foot

Questions about bowled a googly

What is bowled a googly the simple past and past participle of?
Bowled a googly is the simple past and past participle of bowl a googly.

Words near bowled a googly in the dictionary

  1. bowldery
  2. Bowlds
  3. Bowldses
  4. bowle
  5. bowled
  6. bowled a googly
  7. bowled around the legs
  8. bowled out
  9. bowled over
  10. bowled up
  11. bowleg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowled a googly (page history and authors); bowl a googly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bowled a googly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowled_a_googly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.