Tennis Comes From a French Player Shouting Take It

Tennis is played with rackets over a net, and its name is probably a shout. The favoured explanation is French *tenez* — take it, or here it comes — called by the server in the medieval indoor game before striking. English ears turned the call into the name of the game. The scoring is stranger still: fifteen, thirty, forty, and *love* for zero.

• The racket sport. *A tennis court.*
• Real tennis — the older indoor game. *Real tennis at Hampton Court.*
• Table tennis — the indoor bat game. *A table tennis club.*
• Love — a score of zero. *Six games to love.*
• Deuce — forty all. *Deuce again.*

Word forms

• She plays tennis twice a week.The sport.
• The score was forty love.Zero is love.
• Real tennis has almost nothing in common with the modern game.The ancestor.

Why the scoring is so odd

• Fifteen, thirty, forty — one theory points to a clock face, with forty a shortening of forty-five
• Love — perhaps from French *l'oeuf*, an egg, for the shape of a zero, though the evidence is thin
• Deuce — from French *à deux*, meaning two more points are needed
• Advantage — the point after deuce
• All of these are plausible reconstructions rather than proven facts

Anglo-French *tenetz*, the imperative of *tenir*, to hold or take, apparently called by the server. English recorded the game name in the 1300s.