History of Tennis - Terminology

Terminology

Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of real tennis:

• Tennis comes from the French tenez, the imperative form of the verb tenir, to hold: This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning "I am about to serve!" (rather like the cry "Fore!" in golf).
• Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand.
• Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning "to both is the game" (that is, the two players have equal scores).
• Love is widely believed to come from "l'oeuf", the French word for "egg", representing the shape of a zero.
• The convention of numbering scores "15", "30" and "40" comes from quinze, trente and quarante, which to French ears makes a euphonious sequence, or from the quarters of a clock (15, 30, 45) with 45 simplified to 40.