The bowl you eat cereal from every morning takes its name from the same source as the words ball, balloon, and ballot. All four of these words derive from a Germanic source meaning to swell. This sense is still very evident in balloon and ball, items originally made by inflating animal skins, and is still fairly evident in bowl, a vessel “swollen” like half a ball. The relation of “swelling” to ballot, however, has been completely obscured thanks to changes in the election process: whereas we now mark an X on a slip of paper, the ancient Athenians voted by dropping little balls, called ballotta, into a box: a black ballotta counted for a no, a white ballotta for a yes. Much later, when this voting method was adopted in the eighteenth century by British social clubs, the term blackballed arose to describe a person whose application for membership had been rejected.
A wide shallow container used for holding liquids.