tunnelball

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noun

A children's game in which players stand in line with their feet apart, making a tunnel with their legs, down which the lead player propels a ball back to the last player, who runs with it to the front of the line and repeats; played competitively between teams for speed, or by a single team for recreation or exercise.

Scrabble 12
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Meanings

nountunnelball (uncountable)
  1. AustraliaUKuncountablegamesA children's game in which players stand in line with their feet apart, making a tunnel with their legs, down which the lead player propels a ball back to the last player, who runs with it to the front of the line and repeats; played competitively between teams for speed, or by a single team for recreation or exercise.

    I went along to my children′s sports day and found myself cheering madly at the tunnelball games and when they played Chariots of Fire over the running races – it was all I could do not to get up and break the record for the four minute mile myself.

    2006, Sonia Neale, Bad Mother′s Revenge, HarperCollins Australia, unnumbered page
    1 more example

    1994, Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, Chopper 4: For the Term of His Unnatural Life, 2012, Pan Macmillan Australia, unnumbered page, They run the sports for ten days. This includes weightlifting, football, tennis, table tennis, cards, scrabble, chess, draughts, darts, quoits, volleyball, baseball, frisbee tossing, tunnelball, scramble ball, the piggyback race, the egg and spoon race, target handball, the spit the dummy contest, […] .

Origin

From tunnel + ball.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

tunnelball. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tunnelball

MLA

“tunnelball.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tunnelball. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “tunnelball,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tunnelball.

Source: tunnelball on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.