Word.ws English Dictionary

kendama

/ˈkɛnˌdɑːmə/

kendama noun: a traditional Japanese toy with an attached ball that can be caught in any of three cups or on a spike.

kendama: a traditional Japanese toy with an attached ball that can be caught in any of three cups or on a...
Image: Tomomarusan, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

kendama (plural kendamas)

  1. A traditional Japanese toy with an attached ball that can be caught in any of three cups or on a spike.
    • An especially haunting work, “If the Moment Came,” is a waist-high black box with a top made of wired glass and a murky interior that shows a looping video of a hand playing with a kendama, a Japanese toy featuring a wooden handle and a small ball.
      The artist, Chloë Cheuk, said that she created the...2017 March 30, Mike Ives, “As Hong Kong Ponders Its Future Under Beijing, Politics Infuses Its Art”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Feb 2021
    • He spread kendama throughout Japan utilizing strong-minded leadership while working energetically on unifying and codifying the techniques. […] In 1980 Fujiwara moved production of the official JKA kendama to the company Hakushinsya (maker of the Shinfuji).2019 July 12, “History of the Japan Kendama Association”, in Sweet Kendamas, archived from the original on 29 Jun 2021

Forms of kendama

pluralkendamas

Origin of kendama

Borrowed from Japanese けん玉 (けんだま, kendama), from 拳 (けん, ken, “game played with the hands; fist”) or 剣 (けん, ken, “sword”) + 玉 (たま, tama, “ball”).

Questions about kendama

What does kendama mean?
Kendama means a traditional Japanese toy with an attached ball that can be caught in any of three cups or on a spike.
What part of speech is kendama?
Kendama is a noun.
How do you pronounce kendama?
Kendama is pronounced /ˈkɛnˌdɑːmə/.
What is the plural of kendama?
The plural of kendama is kendamas.

Words near kendama in the dictionary

  1. Kendall notation
  2. Kendall rank correlation coefficient
  3. Kendall rank correlation coefficients
  4. Kendall tau distance
  5. Kendall's notation
  6. kendama
  7. kendamas
  8. kendang
  9. kendangs
  10. Kendari
  11. Kendell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kendama (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.

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Cite this entry: “kendama.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kendama. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.