Table tennis bat? Table tennis racket?

[optimistic pessimist]

Dear all,

Do you call a table tennis bat a "racket"?
I think typial rackets have strings. However, when I googled the image of "table tennis rackets" I found so many hits.

Thank you!

OP

[Heterological]

In regular tennis, the instrument is called a "racket;" in table tennis (usually referred to by the trademarked name "Ping Pong," in the U.S. at least) the instrument is called a "paddle."

[Rover_KE]

In BE it's called a bat.


Rover

[BobK]

In BE it's called a bat.


Rover

In regular tennis, the instrument is called a "racket;" in table tennis (usually referred to by the trademarked name "Ping Pong," in the U.S. at least) the instrument is called a "paddle."

This difference is compounded by the fact that the whole game (in Am Eng, maybe just in the strange international dialect I met at a summer school...) is called 'paddle'.

b

[Barb_D]

Hi Bob,
We call it ping-pong most often, but table tennis is common. For sure, we play it with a paddle. (I would think it was funny if someone called it a racquet; now I know it's what you call it in the UK.) I've never heard the game called paddle.

For the record, badminton and tennis are played with a racquet.

Am I spelling that wrong? I'm getting red squiggly lines...

[emsr2d2]

Hi Bob,
We call it ping-pong most often, but table tennis is common. For sure, we play it with a paddle. (I would think it was funny if someone called it a racquet; now I know it's what you call it in the UK.) I've never heard the game called paddle.

For the record, badminton and tennis are played with a racquet.

Am I spelling that wrong? I'm getting red squiggly lines...

I think you may have misread an earlier post. In the UK, it's called either a bat or a paddle (though I have never called it a paddle!), never a racquet!

We call the game table tennis, only little children generally call it ping-pong, although it's played with a "ping-pong ball".

I've certainly never heard that game called "paddle". Now that I live in Spain, I'm learning about their national game which is called "padel". It's a bizarre mix of tennis and squash. I've played it once. I was rubbish!

And no, you're spelling racquet perfectly. I think some spellcheckers have been set to mark it wrong as these days so many people seem to use the Anglicised version - racket.

[Heterological]

In BE it's called a bat.


Rover

I never knew that! In American English, a bat is either the rather cylindrical instrument you use to play baseball, or a hairy, winged (and possibly blood-sucking) mammal. Just another difference between British and American English!

[BobK]

...
We call the game table tennis, only little children generally call it ping-pong, although it's played with a "ping-pong ball".
...

According to Boris Johnson, in his unique contribution to 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy' after the Beijing Olympics , it used to be called 'Whiff-Whaff' - though I've never heard of this. (It suggests, onomatopoeically that the sound of the bats was more significant then than the sound of the ball - so it must have been a very early version, presumably based on a sort of ball that pre-dated the celluloid balls used now.)

b