Re: Love in Tennis


Edward Grefenstette schrieb:

Well, I'm certainly no authority on the matter, but I agree that the
chain of links leading to the arabic word for palm seems stretched.
However, I'd be curious to know if the term "raquette" was used at the
time where tennis was played without a racket, and was called "Le Jeu
de Paume" (literally, the game of palm). Perhaps some etymologist with
knack for history of sports might be able to clarify this, but I
suspect the term "raquette" was coined much later in the history of
tennis. Let us remember that the french had many arabic colonies, and
that quite a few terms of arabic origin have found their way into
modern day french. To me, the link between "racket" and and "raHat" is
a possibility. I will ask Patrick Hanks (Oxford University Press) about
this the next time I have the pleasure of seeing him, as he has
displayed an amazingly extensive knowledge of the most obscure terms in
the past. He'd probably know.

But returning to the main aspect of your question. I believe the link
between the sports term "love" and "l'oeuf" to be more direct, and much
more probable. Although experts disagree
(http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/lovenil),
but "experts" is a wide term, and experts can be wrong.

The explanation playing for love ie for nothing is known to me but I
believe it is not very convincing either. As far as the word "racket"
is concerned a German lecturer (Heiner Gillmeister) at the university
in Bonn, Germany claimed it in his book "Aufschlag für Waltrer ..."
to be of German origin. There seems to be a lot of speculation.
Regards
Jamshid

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