Handball

How to spell handball

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce handball

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does handball mean?

1. nounA team or court game in which players strike or throw a ball using their hands.
2. nounIn football (soccer), an offence in which a player illegally touches the ball with the hand or arm.

Handball in a sentence

• The leisure centre runs a handball league every Tuesday evening.

• The referee awarded a penalty for a clear handball in the box.

• She joined the school handball team after trying several other sports.

• The defender raised his arm and gave away a needless handball.

Where does handball come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound formed from two very old Germanic words: 'hand', which has been part of English since Old English in the form 'hand', and 'ball', a round object whose ancestor was the Old Norse 'boellr' and which entered English in the medieval period. Both elements have close relatives across the Germanic languages, including the German 'Hand' and 'Ball', so it is no surprise that German also has a popular team sport called 'Handball'. The English compound was first used in the 1400s for a small ball thrown or struck by hand, and it later attached to the modern court and team games that grew up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because both parts are short, familiar words spelled exactly as they sound, the joined form carries no hidden trap. The only thing to remember is that it is written as a single solid word, not two words or a hyphenated one.

How the word is built

• hand (the body part, from Old English hand)
• ball (a round object, from Old Norse boellr)