First recorded in 1900–05
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His ball ricocheted off the putting surface as if he’d hit a ping-pong table before rolling into the water.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 11, 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
Timothee Chalamet had long appeared a lock for his pushy 1950s ping-pong player in "Marty Supreme."
From Barron's ● Mar. 15, 2026
Rainy days, I generally sat in a dry place and read a book, often just an axe length away from a ping-pong table.
From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger
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
In the evenings kids watched TV or played Ping-Pong and dominoes in the dayroom, or settled in to make phone calls at one of the two pay phones.
From "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
