How to spell ball

hear itball/bɔl/nounStarter

What it means: A round object used in games.

In a sentence: The ball is bouncing high in the air.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double l. Often misspelled as bal or boll.

Same family: ballroom, ballgown, masquerade, gala, banquet. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: This sense of "ball" comes from Old French "bal," meaning a dancing party, which in turn comes from a verb meaning "to dance." It’s unrelated to the round object "ball," even though they now look and sound the same in modern English.

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Words like this

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