sb. pl. Chiefly U.S. A game in which ten pins (see PIN sb.1 8) or ‘men’ are set up to be bowled at; cf. NINEPINS; spec. a game so played in U.S., called in England ‘American bowls.’ Also, the pins with which this game is played; in sing. tenpin, one of these.
[1600. Rowlands, Let. Humours Blood, iv. 64. To play at loggets, nine holes, or ten pinnes.]
1807. Crabbe, Par. Reg., III. 106. When justice winked on every jovial crew, And ten-pins tumbled in the parson’s view.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes, vi. Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins.
1884. H. C. Bunner, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 298/2. Base-ball and ten-pins are in no great favor.
1893. Nation (N. Y.), 20 July, 51/2. Even a ten-pin must be set up before it is knocked down.
b. attrib. and Comb., as ten-pin alley, ball.
1868. M. H. Smith, Sunshine & Shadow N. York, 218. The click of the billiard ball, and the booming of the ten-pin alley, are distinctly heard.
1877. C. S. Henry, Satan as a Moral Philosopher, etc., xv. 170. A clergyman once said to me: ‘There is an old woman in my flock who told me she never wished to hear a minister preach who handled a ten-pin ball.’
1895. Outing (U.S.), XXVI. 444/1. You rush to the bottom like a ten-pin ball sent spinning down its alley.
