the.com/bocce

means An Italian lawn-bowling game where players toss or roll balls trying to land closest to a smaller target ball, the pallino.

from The word traces back to Italian bocce, plural of boccia meaning 'ball,' itself rooted in Vulgar Latin bottia — likely kin to the word that gave us 'bottle' via a shared sense of something round and container-like. The game itself is ancient, with forms of ball-tossing contests stretching back to Roman times and earlier, but the Italian name we use today solidified as the sport became an Italian regional pastime before spreading abroad with emigrants.