Tennis, The Word

A very nice article that explains the origin of the word "tennis" and how tennis came about:

"In the English language, sports, for the most part, have assumed intuitive and descriptive names. The word baseball, for instance, is a compound that combines base and ball, two objects central to the game.
Basketball signifies meaning by a similar logic, as does European football. Endurance sports are even more straightforward: Take swimming, running, cycling,nouns that derive simply from the actions themselves.
Still others, while not completely transparent, aren’t too difficult to trace back to their roots; fencing, for example, was apparently shortened from defence (the British spelling of defense), sometime during the Renaissance.

But what about the etymology of tennis? Where and how did this word and its meaning originate?"


http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2013/03/tennis-word/46831/#.UUidDxml3go

- English Language : Tennis
- Afrikaans Language : tennis
- Albanian Language : tenis
- Arabic Language : كرة المضرب
- Armenian Language : թենիս
- Azerbaijani Language : tennis
- Basque Language : tenis
- Belarusian Language : тэніс
- Bulgaria Language : тенис
- Catalan Language : tennis
- Chinese (Simplified) Language : 网球
- Chinese (Traditional) Language : 網球
- Croatian Language : tenis
- Czech Language : tenis
- Danish Language : tennis
- Dutch Language : tennis
- Estonian Language : tennis
- Filipino Language : tenis
- Finnish Language : tennis
- French Language : tennis
- Galician Language : tenis
- Georgian Language : ჩოგბურთი
- German Language : Tennis
- Greek Language : τένις
- Haitian Creole Language : tenis
- Hebrew Language : טונה
- Hindi Language : टैनिस
- Hungarian Language : tenisz
- Icelandic Language : tennis
- Indonesian Language : tenis
- Irish Language : leadóg
- Italian Language : tennis
- Japanese Language : テニス
- Korean Language : 테니스
- Latvian Language : teniss
- Lithuanian Language : tenisas
- Macedonia Language : тенис
- Malay Language : Tenis
- Maltese Language : tennis
- Norwegian Language : tennis
- Persian Language : تنیس
- Polish Language : tenis
- Portugese Language : tênis
- Romanian Language : tenis
- Russian Language : тенис
- Serbian Language : тенис
- Slovak Language : tenis
- Slovenian Language : tenis
- Spanish Language : tenis
- Swahili Language : tenisi
- Swedish Language : tennis
- Thai Language : เทนนิส
- Turkish Language : tenis
- Urdu Language : ٹینس
- Vietnamese Language : tennis
- Welsh Language : tennis
- Yiddish Language : טעניס

I have also read something from tennis history roots and learned why we count points by fifteens. The source also relates to French, where they had special watches on courts which counted a point by a quarter of an hour. Then there is a question why we do not count 45 instead of 40. It was supposedly shortened due to easier pronounceability and it is faster to say.

paulcz wrote:I have also read something from tennis history roots and learned why we count points by fifteens. The source also relates to French, where they had special watches on courts which counted a point by a quarter of an hour. Then there is a question why we do not count 45 instead of 40. It was supposedly shortened due to easier pronounceability and it is faster to say.

Exactly. And Love comes from oeuf (egg) (if I remember correctly) cause "oeuf" has a round (zero) shape.

It would be interesting to find out how court dimensions and proportions were worked out.
I bet they'd need to be redesigned for today's giants if the same principles were applied.
Nadal would probably love to play on a court the size of football pitch.

and the scoring system!

noleisthebest wrote:It would be interesting to find out how court dimensions and proportions were worked out.
I bet they'd need to be redesigned for today's giants if the same principles were applied.
Nadal would probably love to play on a court the size of football pitch.

and with the net high 1,5 meter. Let's stop writing about that or Toni will notice and ask for it Larry to install it for next IW.

noleisthebest wrote:It would be interesting to find out how court dimensions and proportions were worked out.
I bet they'd need to be redesigned for today's giants if the same principles were applied.
Nadal would probably love to play on a court the size of football pitch.

They have changed over time if I remember correctly. And I agree they woudl need to change again. Narrower close to the net and wider in the baseline. So they shoudl be like 2 trapezium separated by the net. Like a butterfly or bow tie.

The problem with todays strings is that when you unbalance your opponent by sending him in the tameline, It's very easy for him to make you run too thanks to topspin and strings. Having a narrower centre would make the target smaller and favour the risk takers.

In fact playing with those new string simply changed the targets of the court and the dynamics. keeping the center of the court is not necessarily a good thing unlike back then.