Word.ws English Dictionary

telly tennis

telly tennis noun: the game of Pong, or any TV game closely based on it.

Noun

telly tennis (uncountable)

  1. (Australia, UK, slang) The game of Pong, or any TV game closely based on it.
    • The monitored heart-rate on a small screen, like a hesitant green version of the telly tennis he'd played in pubs or railway stations.1976, Elaine Feinstein, The ecstasy of Dr Miriam Garner, page 101
    • Hooked on telly tennis, or football? We've been carrying out some in-depth testing of (playing with) a TV games unit for you to build.1979 October 4, New Scientist, volume 84, number 1175, page 48

Forms of telly tennis

alternative formtele-tennis
alternative formteletennis

Origin of telly tennis

From telly + tennis, the game having a superficial resemblance to table tennis.

Questions about telly tennis

What does telly tennis mean?
Telly tennis means the game of Pong, or any TV game closely based on it.
What part of speech is telly tennis?
Telly tennis is a noun.

Words near telly tennis in the dictionary

  1. telluropyrans
  2. telluropyrylium
  3. tellurous
  4. Tellus
  5. telly
  6. telly tennis
  7. tellys
  8. Tellytubby
  9. Telmanove
  10. telmatherinid
  11. telmatherinids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: telly tennis (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-telly tennis.ogg.

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