Editing Ball (section)

== Etymology ==
The first known use of the word ''ball'' in English in the sense of a globular body that is played with was in 1205 in ''[[Layamon's Brut, or Chronicle of Britain]]'' in the phrase, "{{lang|la|Summe heo driuen balles wide ȝeond Þa feldes.}}" ("Some of them drove balls far across the fields.") The word came from the [[Middle English]] ''bal'' (inflected as ''ball-e, -es''), in turn from [[Old Norse]] ''böllr'' (pronounced {{IPA|non|bɔlːr|}}; compare Old Swedish ''baller'', and Swedish ''boll'') from [[Proto-Germanic]] ''ballu-z'' (whence probably Middle High German ''bal, ball-es'', Middle Dutch ''bal''), a [[cognate]] with [[Old High German]] ''ballo, pallo'', Middle High German balle from Proto-Germanic ''*ballon'' (weak masculine), and Old High German ''ballâ, pallâ'', Middle High German ''balle'', Proto-Germanic ''*ballôn'' (weak feminine). No Old English representative of any of these is known. (The answering forms in Old English would have been ''beallu, -a, -e''—compare ''bealluc, ballock''.) If ''ball-'' was native in Germanic, it may have been a cognate with the Latin ''foll-is'' in sense of a "thing blown up or inflated." In the later Middle English spelling ''balle'' the word coincided graphically with the French ''balle'' "ball" and "bale" which has hence been erroneously assumed to be its source. French ''balle'' (but not ''boule'') is assumed to be of Germanic origin, itself, however. In [[Ancient Greek]] the word πάλλα (''palla'') for "ball" is attested<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dpa%2Flla&highlight=ball πάλλα] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924204511/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=pa%2Flla&highlight=ball |date=2015-09-24 }}, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus</ref> besides the word σφαίρα (''sfaíra''), ''[[sphere]]''.<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsfai%3Dra^&highlight=ball σφαίρα] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170320052243/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3Dsfai%3Dra%5E&highlight=ball |date=2017-03-20 }}, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus</ref>