Definition of "racquetball" [racquetball]

• A game played on a four-walled handball court by two or four players with short-handled rackets and a hollow rubber ball 2 1/4 inches (5.7 centimeters) in diameter. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "These games could be defined simply as ` handball played with a paddle, 'the only difference being that paddleball employs a perforated wooden racquet and a large spongy ball, while racquetball, which is rapidly pushing both handball and paddleball into obscurity, employs a small strung racquet and a lively rubber ball."
• "Women who gain too little are more likely to have smaller babies. 6 Exercise: sports such as racquetball that expose the abdomen to potential trauma."
• "Monte Alban also has many large stellas or stone hieroglyph carvings and two ballcourts (which seem to lend themselves more to a kind of racquetball game than the hoop style basketball courts of the Maya)."