ping pong
23
1.1
- noun
- /ˈpɪŋ ˈpɔŋ/
:
ping-pong
- After dinner, we enjoyed a fun game of ping pong in the basement.
- play ping pong
- ping pong table
- ping pong ball
It it's the same thing as there being, I don't know, a ping pong table in the room and you saying to this person, are you good at ping pong?
- It it's the same thing as there being, I don't know, a ping pong table in the room and you saying to this person, are you good at ping pong?
- And there used to be a ping pong table in the homeless shelter.
- But one thing, it's like a ping pong sort of match for something.
Examples
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For some reason, ping pong came very naturally to me.
Fiction book (1994) -
And number 2, we got a ping pong table this summer.
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I just got a ping-pong table.
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I just got a ping-pong table.
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I worked out after that, I played a little bit more ping pong after that.
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We drive to Walmart, we buy a ping-pong table.
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Why are there ping pong balls all over the floor?
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Forrest is playing ping-pong by himself at the gymnasium.
Fiction book (1994) -
The previous owner left antique furniture in the property, including this Edwardian ping pong table.
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We love to rollerblade together and play volleyball, tennis, ping pong, and Ultimate Frisbee together.
Blog text (23)
Synonyms
15
1.6
A game like tennis played on a table using small paddles and a light ball
8
1.4
A game like tennis played on a table with small paddles and a light ball
Surface Forms
Morphology
ping + pong
The elements 'ping' and 'pong' are onomatopoeic sounds (with 'pong' glossed as a short sharp sound), so there is a perceptible link between the parts and the sound of a ball hitting a table. However, the leap from two sound-words to the specific concept 'a table game played with paddles' is not fully compositional; knowing the constituents alone would not reliably lead a B1 learner to infer the sporting meaning without prior exposure or cultural knowledge, though the term is widely used cross-linguistically which gives it partial recognizability.
Etymology
The noun ping pong comes from the tiny sounds ping and pong that a light ball makes when players hit it back and forth on a table. So the sound image became the name for the game now called 'table tennis'.