Bowling is a game where you roll a heavy ball down a long, smooth lane to knock over pins standing at the far end. In the most common version, ten pins are arranged in a triangle, and you get two chances per turn to knock them all down. If you knock down all ten pins with your first ball, it's called a strike. If you use both balls to clear all the pins, that's a spare.

A bowling ball has three holes drilled into it for your fingers and thumb, and it can weigh anywhere from 6 to 16 pounds. The pins stand about 60 feet away from where you release the ball. Modern bowling alleys keep score automatically on screens above each lane, though understanding how the scoring works (strikes and spares earn bonus points) adds to the challenge.

The word also describes the British lawn game called lawn bowling or bowls, where players roll slightly lopsided balls across grass toward a smaller target ball. You might also hear the phrase bowling over someone, which means knocking them down or overwhelming them with surprise, like how a big dog might accidentally bowl over someone while playing.