Word.ws English Dictionary

basketballese

basketballese noun: the jargon associated with the sport of basketball.

Noun

basketballese (uncountable)

  1. The jargon associated with the sport of basketball.
    • During the long, dreary, wet winter I amused myself by watching college and Pro basketball on the idiot box. Will one of you basketball-savvy gardeners please tell me what RPI stands for in basketballese?2003 March 31, Bill Litchfield, “Basketball Fans”, in rec.gardens (Usenet)
    • Detroit bounced back nicely with a 65-50 victory over Connecticut. The Shock never trailed in this one, and led by as many as 25. Fast break points were a key, as was the Shock's scoring production “in the paint,” as the area close to the basket is known in basketballese.2006, Vince Prygoski, Worst to First: Or a ‘Shock’ing Tale of Women's Basketball in Motown, Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, →ISBN, page 53

Origin of basketballese

From basketball + -ese.

Questions about basketballese

What does basketballese mean?
Basketballese means the jargon associated with the sport of basketball.
What part of speech is basketballese?
Basketballese is a noun.

Words near basketballese in the dictionary

  1. basketball-players
  2. basketballdom
  3. basketballed
  4. basketballer
  5. basketballers
  6. basketballese
  7. basketballing
  8. basketballs
  9. basketbrawl
  10. basketbrawls
  11. basketcase

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: basketballese (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: “basketballese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/basketballese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.