In everyday American English, bowling means the indoor game of rolling a heavy ball down a long wooden or synthetic lane to knock down ten pins. The word has a few other established meanings, though, and which one someone has in mind depends on where they're from and which sport they follow.
The main meanings
- Ten-pin bowling: a player rolls a ball down a 60-foot lane at ten pins set in a triangle. A game has ten frames with up to two balls each (three in the tenth), and a perfect game is 300. This is what "going bowling" means in the US, Canada and most of the world.
- Other pin games: candlepin, duckpin and five-pin bowling use smaller balls and different pins. See candlepin vs duckpin and five-pin bowling.
- Lawn bowls (lawn bowling): players roll weighted balls called bowls across grass, trying to finish closest to a small target ball, the jack. There are no pins. See the lawn bowling guide.
- Cricket: "bowling" is the act of delivering the ball to the batter, with a straight arm, and the player who does it is the bowler. See types of bowling in cricket.
As a verb
"To bowl" means to roll a ball along the ground, or to deliver it in cricket. A few common expressions come from it:
- Bowl over: to knock someone down, or to amaze them ("I was bowled over by the news").
- Bowl along: to move along quickly and smoothly.
- Bowl a strike / a spare: the core vocabulary of ten-pin. The bowling terms glossary lists the rest.
Where the word comes from
"Bowl" in this sense comes from the French boule, ball, which goes back to the Latin bulla, a bubble or knob. It's a different word from the "bowl" you eat out of, which has Old English roots. Games of rolling a ball at targets are very old, and the long history is told in the history of bowling.
Bowling vs bowls vs bowling alley
A bowling alley (or bowling center) is the building with the lanes. In British and Australian English, bowls almost always means lawn bowls, and the indoor pin game is called ten-pin bowling to make the difference clear.