the.com/pinball

means A game where you launch a steel ball into a tilted, obstacle-filled board and use flipper paddles to keep it alive as long as possible while racking up points.

from Straightforward compound of 'pin' (the pins, posts, and bumpers studding the playfield, echoing older lawn and table games like bagatelle) plus 'ball,' the thing you're flinging around. Early machines in the late 1800s and early 1900s had no flippers at all — you just launched the ball with a plunger and hoped gravity and luck cooperated. Flippers didn't arrive until the late 1940s, turning pinball from a passive gamble into the twitchy, skill-flecked, slightly violent pastime the name now conjures.