Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The game of bowls played in an alley with nine men or pins.
  • noun plural The pins with which this game is played. See tenpins.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun plural A game played with nine pins, or pieces of wood, set on end, at which a wooden ball is bowled to knock them down; bowling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of ninepin.
  • noun The game of skittles

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a bowling game that is played by rolling a bowling ball down a bowling alley at a target of nine wooden pins

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The autumn ramble: the woods, the dog, the gun, the Hudson, the stranger, the "ninepins" company, the flagon, the waking -- the changed scenes.

    Elson Grammar School Literature v4 William H. Elson

  • He secured a seat in the Commons as one of Sir James Lowther's "ninepins," and speedily won the respect of the House.

    A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. Carlton J. H. Hayes 1923

  • Here was no commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing newspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting up ninepins.

    Chapter 6 2010

  • A set of tiny old ninepins with beautiful wormholes in them.

    Summer Cleaning Heather McDougal 2009

  • These are fluid times in pop, with barriers between musical genres falling like ninepins.

    Rizzle Kicks; Alex Clare – review 2011

  • With the favorites falling like ninepins, the unlikely beneficiary has been Sean Gallagher, a reality TV show star and businessman who was considered a 40 to one outsider when the race started.

    Niall O'Dowd: The Irish Presidential Race Becomes a Gripping Soap Opera Niall O'Dowd 2011

  • These two lads started on these trees, and had them falling like ninepins, it was taking the rest of us all our time to keep pace stripping them.

    Work Camp 934 L 2010

  • I've seldom been to a performance at the Globe where somebody doesn't faint, and at Titus Andronicus a few years back there was a domino effect in the Yard with people going down like ninepins; guessing who would be next was almost as compelling as the cannibalism happening on stage.

    How to survive six hours of Henry IV at the Globe 2010

  • When Grete's drunken father loses her in a game of ninepins to the local innkeeper, she runs away to pursue Fritz.

    Ringing Down From the Hudson Valley 2010

  • Mattie Ulrich's striking costumes included some that made of a bevy of nurses, escorting maimed soldiers, look like the ninepins that prompted Grete's flight from home.

    Ringing Down From the Hudson Valley 2010

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