tennis ball

American

noun

a hollow ball used in tennis, made of rubber with a fuzzy covering of woven Dacron, nylon, or wool.

tennis ball British

noun

a hollow rubber ball covered with felt, used in tennis

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

tennis balls

plural

Etymology

Origin of tennis ball

late Middle English word dating back to 1400–50

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

tennis ball

Still, squeezing a tennis ball repeatedly isn’t going to improve your overall strength, says McGrath.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026

This small sideways displacement is the optical equivalent of the Magnus effect that makes a spinning table tennis ball curve through the air.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 13, 2026

At the US Open, before his fourth-round match against Arthur Rinderknech, Alcaraz high-fived every person on the front row, and after his victory, signed every oversized tennis ball that was handed to him.

From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2026

The white plastic ball, the size of a tennis ball, is packed with ball bearings that rattle as it rolls.

From Barron's ● Nov. 22, 2025

Then Duncan Priest and Mark Badbury appeared with a tennis ball.

From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023