This is the Allusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, find out what language is really hiding

under its mattress. Today's show concerns mental health, and there's nothing particularly

strong or graphic in the content, but I just wanted to let you know that the discussion

nudges some topics which may not be comfortable for everybody. So if you have concerns, please

sit this episode out and return in two weeks with the next one. Let's ready ourselves with

a little light word history. Right now, it is Wimbledon. And even if like me, you don't

care about tennis, this is exciting because of etymology, albeit somewhat contested etymology

as can be found for the word tennis. Which turned up around the 14th century and most likely

came from the Old French ten-year, meaning to hold, or more precisely the Anglo-French

imperative form of the verb, tenets, meaning hold or receive or take, which servers used

to shout at their opponents. At the time, the game was called La Palme, because it was

played by hitting the ball with the palm of the hand, but it's understandable that if spectators

observed players shouting tenets all the time, they might assume tenets was the name of

the activity. But if that's true, surely by now, tennis would be known as...

It took a while for tennis to become the Racketsport we're familiar with now, which is widely

attributed to Major Walter C. Wingfield, who first demonstrated it in 1873. It wasn't

called tennis at the time, he named it after the Ancient Greek for ball skills, Sphyristic

A. Apologies if I didn't pronounce that correctly, but in my defence nobody else used to pronounce

it correctly either. Not being Ancient Greeks, they pronounce it Sphyristic, or even sticky,

so the game was soon rebranded Lawn Tennis. To distinguish this new-fangled tennis,

devotees of old hand-based World Court tennis, called that real tennis. They just want

everyone to know they liked tennis before it was cool, yeah? All right, on with the show.

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