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

The Amaterasu particle was reported at about 240 exa-electron volts, giving one tiny cosmic-ray particle roughly the kinetic energy of a fast-moving tennis ball.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 9, 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

The tennis ball, an undisturbed artifact of a horrific wildfire, sat just off the Pacific Palisades court and was so covered in gray ash that its Penn logo was only faintly visible.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2025

In the beginning I used a sawed-off broomstick with an old tennis ball stuck on one end.

From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston

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