tennis ball
"tennis-ball" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tennis ball” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A hollow, bouncy rubber ball, pressurized and covered with usually yellow felt, used in the game of tennis.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tennis ball |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “tennis ball” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
tennis ball is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A hollow, bouncy rubber ball, pressurized and covered with usually yellow felt, used in the game of tennis.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for tennis ball, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English teneys-ball (attested in the plural teneys-ballis), equivalent to tennis + ball. The correct English form is tennis ball, spelled T-E-N-N-I-S- -B-A-L-L.
Definition
- 1A hollow, bouncy rubber ball, pressurized and covered with usually yellow felt, used in the game of tennis.
Etymology
From Middle English teneys-ball (attested in the plural teneys-ballis), equivalent to tennis + ball.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “tennis ball”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-E-N-N-I-S- -B-A-L-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.