Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A game played by two people using the hands or paddles and a ball hung by a cord from an upright post, the objective being to wind the cord around the post.

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

  • noun A two-person sport where players hit a ball on the end of a tether attached to the top of a pole in opposte directions, and the winner is the one who manages to make the tether wrap all the way round the pole.
  • noun The ball in the sport of tetherball.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tetherball.

Examples

  • He's the tetherball attached to my pole, the flying trapeze of my soul.

    Wrestling with Genetics Robert Vaughan 2011

  • Ted and Ben were fierce tetherball rivals in grade school and ran track together at PVHS.

    Parents Behaving Badly Scott Gummer 2011

  • Or two pantsless men playing tetherball with a hive full of 50,000 bees?

    'Jackass 3D': Tomfoolery and camaraderie in a whole new dimension Dan Kois 2010

  • The relationship is wound tight as the rope around the tetherball pole that's between Lach and Lam for most of the evening, and it often happens that one of the competitive siblings usually Lach storms off in anger.

    Theater review: 'Tether' by Julie Taiwo Oni 2011

  • The twins in "Tether" play tetherball with fanatical enthusiasm onstage, and converse while playing in a linguistic shorthand.

    Backstage at Washington Shakespeare Company's 'Juno and the Paycock' 2011

  • This kind of recognition was unthinkable when I was growing up, when "girls' sports" were pretty much relegated to tetherball and, when space allowed, community softball games.

    My Husband Is Watching Other Women! 2011

  • He rams the guy in the right pectoral, just enough off center to make him spin away from the crash with the whip of a tetherball at the end of a point.

    Angry Young Man Chris Lynch 2011

  • Ted and Ben were fierce tetherball rivals in grade school and ran track together at PVHS.

    Parents Behaving Badly Scott Gummer 2011

  • But when he presented the idea at a meeting, Brin and Page, who had tied water bottles to the venetian blind cords and were playing a game of water-bottle tetherball, nixed the idea.

    In the Plex Steven Levy 2011

  • The stage of the Studio Theatre at Silver Spring's Cultural Arts Center is bare but for the tetherball set that Grastorf and Wheeler whack at during Oni's brief scenes the show is a series of blackout sketches.

    Theater review: 'Tether' by Julie Taiwo Oni 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Heh, this game was sold in Australia under the brand name Totem Tennis.

    November 12, 2008