ping-pong

¹

[ping-pong, -pawng]

verb (used with object)

1. to move back and forth or transfer rapidly from one locale, job, etc., to another; switch.

   The patient was ping-ponged from one medical specialist to another.

verb (used without object)

1. to go back and forth; change rapidly or regularly; shift; bounce.

   For ten years the foreign correspondent ping-ponged between London and Paris.

Ping-Pong

²

[ping-pong, -pawng]

Trademark.

1. table tennis.

Ping-Pong

/ ˈpɪŋˌpɒŋ /

noun

1. Also called: ping pong. another name for table tennis

Word History and Origins

Origin of ping-pong¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

It also reduces the chances of a ping-pong effect of passage, repeal, and passage again that leads to economic and legal uncertainty.

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Josh Safdie’s wildly entertaining, over-caffeinated portrait of a single-minded ping-pong player premiered on its home turf at the New York Film Festival and people left the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall caught up in the rapture of the movie’s delirium.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Having entered the kindergarten the year Nixon and Kissinger entered the White House, I remember classmates thrilling to their foreign policy adventures: The undeniable fun of ping-pong diplomacy, the excitement of the opening to Communist China, the welcome announcement of a nuclear arms “limitation” agreement with Russia, the extravagant televised election-year summits in Beijing and Moscow.

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The ping-pong ball’s rattling in front of me.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

They were standing in broad daylight in a Brooklyn park playing the “ping pong shake,” a game in which they were to shake ping-pong balls out of an empty Kleenex box strapped to their waist.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal