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Glite Dictionary
to play pong

to play pong

1 2.7
To hit a small ball over a net with paddles in table tennis
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : jugar al ping-pong
  • Would you stop playing pong back there please?

And the director decided to do this rather long scene with us playing Pong.

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Examples

  • After school, my friends and I often gather at the park to play pong together.

  • -Do you wanna play pong?

    Devil's Night (2015)

  • If Biden and Camelot were playing pong against Trump and Pence, they'd definitely lose.

    Trevor Wallace

  • Every Saturday, we play pong at the local community center, and it’s a lot of fun.

  • At the reunion, we decided to play pong to reminisce about our college days.

Surface Forms

play pong infinitive
played pong past
played pong past participle
playing pong present participle
plays pong third person singular

Morphology

play + pong

The verb 'play' makes it clear the phrase refers to engaging in a game or activity, so the construction signals playing something; however, the noun 'pong' as an isolated form is not transparently interpretable as 'ping-pong/table tennis' for many learners (it is a clipped or variable form and can have other senses). Because the overall structure is predictable but the specific link from 'pong' to table tennis requires prior exposure, the item is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Play pong comes from the game ping-pong, which was named for the 'ping' and 'pong' sounds a ball makes when it hits a paddle and the table. People often shorten ping-pong to pong, so to play pong simply means 'to play ping-pong'.