ball alley
ball alley noun: a place for playing handball, ranging in structure from a patch of hard flat ground beside a gable to an indoor four-walled court similar to a squash court.
Noun
ball alley (plural ball alleys)
- A place for playing handball, ranging in structure from a patch of hard flat ground beside a gable to an indoor four-walled court similar to a squash court.
- A portion of it was still further desecrated ; up to a very recent period being used as a racket-court, or ball-alley1855, Anthony Marmion, The ancient and modern history of the maritime ports of Ireland, p.300 (London: J.H. Banks)
- Perhaps the single most poignant image in the book is of the handball champion Mickey Walsh, described by Healy as 'our last hero' tossing a ball to himself in the dilapidated ball alley.2011, Keith Duggan, House of Pain: Through the Rooms of Mayo Football, →ISBN, page 58
- Synonyms:
- handball alley
- A bowling alley.
- It shall not be lawful for any person or persons to keep or maintain in the said village, any ball-alley, or apparatus, alley, machine, building or enclosure, constructed or used for the purpose of playing thereon or therewith at the game called or known by the name of nine-pins or ten-pins, for...1828, Charter of the village of Albion, New York; quoted in Tanner v Trustees of Albion 5 Hill 121 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1843)
- [I] knew [Herman Melville] when he was setting up pins in a ball alley.1849, Hiram R. Hawkins, quoted in Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography; Volume 1 : 1819-1851, p.250 (JHU Press, 2005) →ISBN
Examples of ball alley in a sentence
- The school was partly in front of them and on fine evenings, the gable end was used as a ball alley and it was quite a gathering place for young people.2013, November 6, Siobhan Lincoln, Ardmore Memory and Story - The Village "Roads And Houses" p.2 (Waterford Museum)
- This court later became known as a racket court and then a ball alley.2015, Paul Rouse, Sport and Ireland: A History, →ISBN, page 60:
Synonyms of ball alley
Forms of ball alley
| plural | ball alleys |
|---|
Questions about ball alley
- What does ball alley mean?
- Ball alley means a place for playing handball, ranging in structure from a patch of hard flat ground beside a gable to an indoor four-walled court similar to a squash court.
- How do you use ball alley in a sentence?
- The school was partly in front of them and on fine evenings, the gable end was used as a ball alley and it was quite a gathering place for young people.
- What part of speech is ball alley?
- Ball alley is a noun.
- What is the plural of ball alley?
- The plural of ball alley is ball alleys.
Words near ball alley in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ball alley (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “ball alley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ball_alley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.