Whilst none of the words listed here can be dated any further back than the nineteenth century in their sporting contexts, many of the names of the sports and games in which they are used are surprisingly old. Amongst the earliest of all sports recorded in English are also some of the most basic: wrestling was first described in the early thirteenth century, whilst running as a form of sport or exercise is described in Old English texts dating from as far back as the reign of Alfred the Great. Football, archery, golf, bowling, tennis and racquets, an old precursor to tennis, were all first described in the fifteenth century, with hockey (early 1500s), cricket (mid-1500s), handball and billiards (both late 1500s), boxing (early 1700s), athletics (early 1700s) and baseball (mid-1700s) all following on. Amongst the most recently invented of all major sports, meanwhile, are basketball, created by the Canadian James Naismith in 1891, and volleyball, or mintonette as it was originally known, which was invented by the American William G. Morgan in 1895.
Today used in various contexts in English to refer to the final or concluding stage of something, the word endgame dates from the late nineteenth century and was originally a term from chess used to refer to the third and final decisive portion of a game (after the opening and middle-game) when a finish to the game appears imminent. Although the term is somewhat loosely defined, generally the endgame is said to begin when most of the pieces have been captured and removed from the board, forcing the king’s movements to become more aggressive than defensive, and increasing the importance of any pawns that remain on the board.
Meaning ‘crumbling’ or ‘disintegrating’, the adjective flaky dates from as far back as the late 1500s in English, and is formed from the even earlier noun flake, which dates from the late fourteenth century. The more contemporary use of flaky to describe someone who is dimwitted, unreliable or eccentric (or else a combination of all three) dates from the mid-1960s, and is said to have originally been used in baseball to describe a poor-quality or underperforming player who exhibits such characteristics.
The word fluke has several very varied uses and meanings in English, including as the name of a type of flatfish (dating as far back as the eighth century), one of the two pronged heads of an anchor (mid-1500s), the head of a lance or spear (c.1600), one-half of the tail of a whale (mid-1700s), a gullible person or the victim of a crime or prank (early 1800s slang), and waste material left over from the cotton-making process (mid-1800s). In modern English, however, the word is perhaps most often encountered in the sense of a stroke of good fortune or a lucky guess, a meaning which dates from the 1850s and was originally used in billiards to refer to a successful pot scored entirely by chance. In this context, the word was probably originally an English dialect term.
The earliest recorded use of the word follow-through in English is as a verb, used in various sports – but in particular golf and cricket – to refer to the continued movement of a club or bat after the ball has been hit in order to ensure that as forceful a strike as possible is made. In this sense, the word dates from the 1890s, with use of follow-through as a noun recorded shortly after, and the figurative use of the term referring to the consequences or results of something dates from the 1920s.
The history of the word jazz is one of the most enduring mysteries of the English language, as next to nothing besides speculation is known of its origins. Helping to make the word all the more curious is the fact that in its earliest recorded use, jazz appears to have had no reference to music but instead seems to have been a slang term meaning something equivalent to ‘enthusiasm’, ‘energy’ or ‘vigour’ – the Oxford English Dictionary has traced the word back to an article in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times dated 2 April 1912 describing baseball player Ben Henderson’s ‘jazz curve’ pitch. Given the word’s apparent original meaning, of all the potential origins of jazz perhaps the most likely is that it is related to jasm, a nineteenth-century American slang term for ‘pep’ or ‘enthusiasm’, which is itself perhaps of Creole or African-American origin.
The word jinx, used to describe anything that apparently brings bad luck, dates from the early 1900s, with the first recorded evidence of the word in English suggesting that its use in this context probably originated amongst sportsmen who would try to ‘escape the jinx’ if they had been playing poorly for a prolonged period of time. The word itself is believed to have developed from the much earlier seventeenth-century term jynx, meaning ‘magic spell’ or ‘charm’, which is itself likely rooted in the historical association of the wryneck – a bird of the woodpecker family, once widely known as the jynx or yunx – with witchcraft or black magic.
Originally adopted from American English, the term lineup was first used in sporting contexts in the late 1880s to refer to the collective members of a team. The more general use of the word to refer to any assembly or assortment dates from 1904, with the first reference to a police line-up dating from 1907. In the 1930s the term became American criminal slang for the members of a gang involved in a heist.
A raincheck was originally a ticket given out to spectators of a baseball game that had had to be postponed due to bad weather, allowing them to return to watch a future game free of charge. Thought to have been first used in this context in the United States in the mid-1800s, the term quickly slipped into more general use and began to refer to any assurance or guarantee that a prior commitment will be fulfilled at a later date in the early twentieth century. The idiomatic phrase to take a raincheck, requesting that an arrangement or social meeting be postponed, dates from the 1970s.
A nineteenth-century term used in cricket – and later, in the 1920s, in baseball – a screwball was originally a type of bowl in which the bowler would apply a slight spin to the ball, giving it an erratic or surprising delivery that is intended to be difficult for the batsman to return; the word screw was first used in reference to such a spin in cricket in the 1840s, with the first reference to a screwball recorded in 1866. Implying eccentricity or abnormality, screwball was first used as a slang word for a madman or bizarre character in the 1930s, with the first reference to a screwball comedy dating from 1938.
In general use, the word stymie means to ‘obstruct’ or ‘confuse’, but the term was originally a specific golfing expression used to describe the blocking of a hole on the green by an opponent’s ball. In this context, the word was first recorded in English in 1834 in the official rules of the Musselburgh Links golf course in East Lothian – often said to be the world’s oldest continuously used golf course – in which it is explained that, ‘With regard to Stimies the ball nearest the hole if within six inches shall be lifted’. The more general use of the word dates from the early 1900s.