Meanings
- uncountableA precursor to table tennis, played with hard rubber balls.
In fact table tennis was also called gossima in the early days, and, given that Gossamer is the brand name of a condom, the Mayor of London missed out on an even better joke, perhaps calculating that the Chinese wouldn't get it.
[2010 July 17, Howard Jacobson, “Whiff! Whaff! The beautiful game may be coming home”, in The Independent, retrieved 24 Nov 20201 more example
Already we've seen early hallmarks of the twentieth century: colonial decay, cultural appropriation, and competing trademarks. Next up was the rise of the immigrant underclass. World War I shattered the gossima delusions of the aristocracy, and the Great Depression humbled the rest.
2010, Roger Bennett, Eli Horowitz, Everything You Know Is Pong, Harper Collins, →ISBN, page 4
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
From Gossima, a trademark registered by Jacques on 16 July 1891 (trademark number 157,615).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
gossima. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gossima
“gossima.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gossima. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gossima,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gossima.
Source: gossima on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.