Polandball

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A round, cartoon-style character representing Poland, featured in a popular internet comic series that caricatures nations
2. An online comic figure drawn as a ball bearing the image of Poland, used in a long-running web meme about countries
3. A humorous internet character in a web comic series, where Poland is portrayed as a simple, rounded national figure

Etymology: Polandball is a web comic character, a round ball drawn with the flag of Poland, and the name is a plain compound: "Poland" followed by "ball." The character was coined around 2009 and grew out of online image boards, where anonymous users drew and captioned countries as simple, cheerful personifications. The spherical body made each nation easy to draw and easy to recognize at a glance. The word is a fresh coinage rather than an old one, so its roots are in the two English words that make it up. "Poland" comes from the Slavic name for the people (Polish "Polanie," from "pole," field), and "ball" goes back through Middle English "bal" to Old English "beall," with Germanic roots. Joining a country name to "ball" was a quick way for internet users to name each country-ball in the same pattern.