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• ping-pong
  ping-pong

  verb (used with object)

  to move back and forth or transfer rapidly from one locale, job, etc., to another; switch.
• Ping-Pong
  Ping-Pong

  table tennis.

ping-pong

¹ American  

[ping-pong, -pawng] / ˈpɪŋˌpɒŋ, -ˌpɔŋ /

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.

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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 American  

[ping-pong, -pawng] / ˈpɪŋˌpɒŋ, -ˌpɔŋ /

Trademark.

1. table tennis.

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Ping-Pong British  

/ ˈpɪŋˌpɒŋ /

noun

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

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Etymology

Origin of ping-pong

First recorded in 1900–05

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ping-pong Ping-Pong

Ace integrates nine synchronized cameras and three vision systems to track the spinning plastic ping-pong ball.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2026

The dragging of ship anchors, a main way cables get taken out, can damage even armored cables, which are wrapped in steel wire but still roughly the diameter of a ping-pong ball.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026

“Most engineers want to do the 1:00 to 3:45 with a ping-pong break and an hour lunch. That’s the way the Valley worked,” McCardel said.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 4, 2026

The bill is currently at the stage of its parliamentary journey known as "ping-pong", where legislation moves between the Commons and Lords until agreement is reached on its final wording.

From BBC ● Mar. 25, 2026

Appleby was a good pilot and a superhuman ping-pong player with flies in his eyes who never lost a point.

From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

He purchased a Ping-Pong table as his first piece of furniture.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2024

The Ping-Pong table was surrounded by silent reminders of a singular college career — purple helmets, signed footballs, All-Pac-10 plaques, framed articles from Sports Illustrated and The Seattle Times featuring delightfully hackneyed headlines:

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 6, 2023

The favorite spot among players at the Ryder Cup is their team room, with its food and drinks, plenty of laughter, motivational moments and for the Americans, epic tales of Ping-Pong.

From Washington Times ● Sep. 27, 2023

From the control room next door, the animals show up as dots on the computer monitors, looking like remote-control Ping-Pong balls zinging around the room and occasionally coming to rest in odd corners.

From Scientific American ● Jun. 16, 2023

“Well, he wanted to, but his family was kind of poor, you know, so what he did was he got a Ping-Pong ball and painted an eye on it and he used that.”

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson

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