a small sphere
"The children spent their afternoon rolling clay pellets into tiny spheres for their art project."
A small, compressed, hard chunk of matter.
"The stray cat spent all afternoon hunting for a discarded meat pellet left on the porch."
To form into pellets.
"The farmer used a special machine to pellet the dried corn before storing it in silos."
The word "pellet" comes from the Old French term pelote, meaning "small ball." This traces back to a diminutive form of the Latin word pila, which also means "ball."