Etymology

volleyball

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Today it means: A game played on a rectangular court between two teams of two to six players which involves striking a ball back and forth over a net. Full definition →

English ball ← Middle English bal ← Old English *beall
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The story

  1. Englishvolley
  2. Proto-Indo-European*bʰel-
  3. Proto-Germanic*balluz
  4. Old English*beall
  5. Middle Englishbal
  6. Englishball
  7. English todayvolleyball

From volley + ball. In 1895, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, William G. Morgan created a new game called Mintonette, a name derived from the game of badminton. After an observer, Alfred Halstead, noticed the volleying nature of the game at its first exhibition match in 1896, played at the International YMCA Training School (now called Springfield College), the game quickly became known as volleyball (it was originally spelled as two words: "volley ball")

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.