pickleball

• pickle ball, pickle-ball

From pickle boat and ball. Coined by the sport inventor's wife who was reminded "of the pickle boat in rowing where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats." Similarly, the game initially used left-over equipment from badminton, table tennis, and wiffleball.^[1]

pickleball (countable and uncountable, plural pickleballs)

1. (uncountable) A racquet sport resembling tennis, played with solid paddles and a perforated ball, which combines elements of badminton, table tennis and wiffleball.
   • 2022 February 19, Shannon Mullen, “America's fastest growing sport is a cross between tennis, ping pong, and badminton”, in National‎^[2], NPR, retrieved 19 February 2022:

     For the rapidly decreasing number of Americans who've never heard of pickleball, the obscure paddleball game is America's fastest growing sport for the second year in a row.

   • 2025 February 1, Noah Goldberg, “He runs a desert micro-nation by the Salton Sea. Population Zero.”, in Los Angeles Times‎^[3], archived from the original on 1 February 2025:

     It’s hard to say whether Corona was actually playing pickleball or was just nowhere near Slowjamastan at the time of the burglary and thinks it’s funny to say he was playing pickleball.

2. (countable) The ball used in the sport of pickleball.