What does "basketball" mean?

A sport in which two opposing teams of five players strive to put a ball through a hoop.

What is a synonym for "basketball"?

Common synonyms include: hoops, b ball, b-ball, ball, basket, basket.

Pronounced //ˈbɑːs.kɪt.bɔːl//.

//ˈbɑːs.kɪt.bɔːl// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Noun

1
A sport in which two opposing teams of five players strive to put a ball through a hoop. uncountable
"to play basketball"
2
a game played on a court by two opposing teams of 5 players; points are scored by throwing the ball through an elevated horizontal hoop wordnet
3
The particular kind of ball used in the sport of basketball. countable
4
an inflated ball used in playing basketball wordnet

Verb

1
To play basketball. informal, intransitive
"by high school he was basketballing with the best of an all-Negro league"
2
To throw in a similar way to when shooting a basketball. informal, transitive
"He took a sip from a paper coffee-cup , crumpled it up and basketballed it into a small rubbish bin about five feet from him."

"Yoshio said he would pay as much as 15,000 yen for a new pair of basketball shoes, but I thought that was quite expensive."

From basket + ball.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.