Pickleball

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A racquet sport resembling tennis, played with solid paddles and a perforated ball, which combines elements of badminton, table tennis and wiffleball. uncountable

    "For the rapidly decreasing number of Americans who've never heard of pickleball, the obscure paddleball game is America's fastest growing sport for the second year in a row."

  2. 2
    The ball used in the sport of pickleball. countable

Example

More examples

"Tom and Mary played pickleball."

Etymology

From pickle boat and ball. Coined by the sport inventor's wife who was reminded "of the pickle boat in rowing where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats." Similarly, the game initially used left-over equipment from badminton, table tennis, and wiffleball.

Related phrases

table tennis

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