{"id":8892,"date":"2013-07-12T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T11:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=8892"},"modified":"2013-07-12T11:32:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T11:32:40","slug":"its-very-sticky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=8892","title":{"rendered":"It’s very sticky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Major<\/p>\n

I discovered (via Inky Fool<\/a>) an alternative word for tennis today – sphairistike<\/strong> [sf\u025b\u0259\u02c8r\u026ast\u026ak\u026a], which sounds a bit like the phrase ‘it’s very sticky’. This was the name coined by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield (pictured right), who invented (lawn) tennis in 1873, and it comes from the Greek \u03c3\u03d5\u03b1\u03b9\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae<\/em> (sfairistik\u00e9), or ‘(skill) in playing at ball’ or ‘sphere-tech’.<\/p>\n

Before then the word tennis, which comes from the French word tenez<\/em> (hold), referred to a game played in an enclosed court – a game now known as Real Tennis.<\/p>\n

Strangely the word sphairistike never really caught on, and everyone began referring to the game a tennis or lawn tennis.<\/p>\n

A related word is sphairistic<\/strong> (adj) = tennis playing.<\/p>\n

Do you know of any other obscure or obsolete terms for popular sports?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I discovered (via Inky Fool) an alternative word for tennis today – sphairistike [sf\u025b\u0259\u02c8r\u026ast\u026ak\u026a], which sounds a bit like the phrase ‘it’s very sticky’. This was the name coined by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield (pictured right), who invented (lawn) tennis in 1873, and it comes from the Greek \u03c3\u03d5\u03b1\u03b9\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae (sfairistik\u00e9), or ‘(skill) in playing at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,118,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-greek","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}