Wimbledon opens on Monday, so time to look at the word "tennis". The game of batting a ball around a court seems to have been brought to England by the French in the 1300s. The French apparently yelled, “Tenez!” (“Here, take it!”) before they served. The English pronounced this as t'NETZ, then t'NESS, until finally we ended up with “tennis”. In 1873 a version of the game played outdoors on a lawn was invented, and dubbed with the unwieldy faux Greek name “sphairistike”, purportedly meaning “the art of ball-playing” and pronounced sfair-ISS-ticky. Not being stupid, people opted for the more manageable “lawn tennis” the inventor also offered. And then, ironically, the French borrowed the word back from English as le tennis.
For the history of the word "racquet", click here.
For the history of the word "racquet", click here.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteFor someone less at ease with English, I would need to ask: but why was the "n" doubled ? I suppose it was done in order to better approximate the pronunciation, according to the rules of English.
Still, what would the pronunciation of just "tenis" be ?
Thank you.