In the arena of sports, you can be an “amateur” or a “professional.” Either way, discovering the roots of game- and sports-related words, such as “checkmate,” “muscle,” and “lacrosse,” will expand that “little chukker” in your head—your brain!

Amateur

An amateur is someone who participates in sports, the arts, or sciences for the pleasure of it rather than for money. The word is derived from the Latin verb amare, meaning “to love.”

Archery/Archer

“Archery” and “archer” are both derived from the Latin noun arcus, meaning “bow.”

Arena

The Romans called the area of the amphitheater where the gladiators fought the harena. The term harena is Latin for the word “sand.” This area constantly was being covered with sand to absorb the blood of the wounded and dying gladiators. No arena does this today, and old-fashioned butcher stores, with their sawdust-sprinkled floors, may be the only ones to continue this practice.

The Colosseum in Rome is one of the more renowned amphitheaters in the world. Begun about the year 72 by the emperor Vespasian, the arena was opened by the emperor Titus and inaugurated in the year 80. It seated approximately 50,000 people and hosted many gladiatorial contests.

Camp

“Camp” can be used as a noun to refer to a military site, a summer retreat, an outdoor recreation center, or a tent or cabin set up as temporary lodging. As a verb, it means “to set up temporary living quarters.” English borrowed the term from the Latin noun campus, meaning “field” or “level ground.”

Checkmate

Since the game of chess originated somewhere in Asia, it is fitting that the English chess term “checkmate” traces its origin to an Eastern language. In chess, when a player corners an opponent’s king, the player calls “checkmate” and wins the game. The term is a form of the Persian phrase shah mat, which means “the king dies.” To warn an opponent that his or her king is in danger, a player uses the simple word “check,” from the Persian word for king.

Chess was first played in India. It spread to the Middle East around the 6th century and then to Europe by the 13th century.

Chukker

The game of polo came to England and the Western world by way of India. To play the game, players on horseback use mallets to hit a small wooden ball. Two teams compete, and the object is to drive the ball through the opponent’s goal. Before a game, organizers decide whether there will be four, six, or eight periods of play. Each period is called a chukker, from the Hindi word chukkar, which means “a wheel” or “a circular running track for exercising horses.”

Gymnastics

The Greeks greatly admired the beauty of the human body, especially as it performed on the racetrack or in athletic competition. The Greeks also believed that the body needed to be free of clothes to perform at its best. For many centuries, Greek men and boys trained and competed in the nude. Some historians believe that this rule of no clothes helped officials enforce the law preventing women from participating in the Olympics. Also, the renowned Greek physician Hippocrates believed that the body’s skin and nervous system needed direct sunlight. Thus, the Greeks formed their verb gymnazein, meaning “to train” or “to exercise in the nude,” from their adjective gymnos, (“naked”). Gymnasion was the name given to the place where the training took place.

Judo/Jujitsu

In the 17th century, a type of fighting called jujitsu was favored by Japan’s samurai warriors. Jujitsu, which uses hands and as few weapons as possible, was considered a complement to a samurai’s skill as a swordsman. With the fall of the samurai in the late 19th century, jujitsu’s popularity declined. However, many of its moves were incorporated into the fighting style known as judo. Both terms, “judo” and “jujitsu,” trace their origin to the Chinese word ju, meaning “gentle” (in the sense that a competitor yields to his opponent’s attack while at the same time trying to control it).

Samurai were the warrior class of feudal Japan that emerged in the 10th century. Their special legal position was abolished in 1868, but their influence on the government, the police, and the army continued until World War II.

Kung fu

Translated as “skill” in English, kung fu is a Chinese martial art consisting of unarmed personal combat. While there are hundreds of styles of kung fu, the moves are mostly circular and require much concentration, self-discipline, and muscle coordination.

Lacrosse

A popular sport, lacrosse involves two teams of 10 men or 12 women each. Using long-handled, pouched rackets for throwing and catching, each team tries to advance a small, hard, rubber ball across the field into the opponent’s goal. The game was first played by American Indians, whose teams sometimes consisted of hundreds on each side. In the early 18th century, French missionaries and settlers saw the Algonquin Indians playing this game and called it baggataway. Because the webbed sticks resembled the staff of a bishop (a high-ranking Christian clergyman), the French called it jeu de la crosse, or “game of the crosier.” A crosier is a staff with a crook at the top that is carried by a Christian bishop. In time, the phrase was shortened to “lacrosse.”

Major league lacrosse began in the United States in February 1999. The professional league consists of six teams. Before 1999, only indoor, or box, lacrosse was played at the professional level in America.

Mahjong

For centuries, the Chinese have enjoyed mahjong, which is essentially a game of dominoes. The players use 144 pieces known as tiles made of ivory, bone, bamboo, wood, or plastic. “Mahjong” is a combination of the regional forms of two Chinese words: mah, meaning “the hemp plant,” and jong, meaning “sparrow.” Some people believe that the game’s name refers to the noise the tiles make as the players move them on the board, a noise that is similar to the rustling of the leaves of the hemp plant or a sparrow’s chirping.

Mahjong took America by storm in the 1920s, when mahjong parties became a craze.

Muscle

Flex your arm and watch the movement of the muscle. Can you see something underneath your skin that seems to run up and down along your bone? To the Romans, this looked like a little mouse. Therefore, the term musculus, meaning “little mouse,” became associated with that particular part of the body.

Rebus

Today, “rebus” refers to a word game in which pictures of objects suggest words or phrases. For example, a picture of a key and a board would be a rebus for “keyboard.” “Rebus” is both a Latin word meaning “by things” and the abbreviated form of the Latin phrase rebus non verbis, “by things, not words.”

Regatta

Originally a Venetian term used to denote a race between gondolas, “regatta” came into the English language as a word that meant a boat race of any kind or a series of such races. “Regatta” traces its roots to the Italian verb rigattare, meaning “to compete.”

The Italian city of Venice is built on 118 islands, separated by narrow canals and joined in the middle by a causeway.

Sports

This commonly used term traces it roots to the Latin prefix dis, meaning “away,” and the Latin verb portare, meaning “to carry.” Technically, therefore, sports should help you relax and turn your mind away from work and problems. The word disport, meaning “to play,” also shares the same root words.

The first issue of Sports Illustrated was published on August 16, 1954. The magazine’s first sportsman of the year was Englishman Roger Bannister. On May 6, 1954, Bannister was the first athlete to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. His time was 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

Stadium

One of the major sporting events in ancient Greece was the footrace. It was also the most eagerly awaited event in the Olympic Games. The length of the standard footrace was about 600 feet, a unit of measure known to the Greeks as a stadion. The area designated as the course for games was one stadion in length and allowed runners a straight course. On the sides and ends were tiered seats for spectators. The Greeks called the space and building the stadion, from which the Romans derived their stadium. English later borrowed the Latin term intact.

The first elliptically-shaped stadium was built at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1914. It still hosts football games today.

Taijiquan

Taijiquan is a form of boxing or gymnastics combining slow movements and breath control. It was developed by the ancient Chinese both as an exercise and as a method of attack and defense. Considered a martial art, taijiquan (better known as “tai chi”) means “the grand ultimate fist” and may be practiced with or without weapons.

Tournament

Jousting, a fight between two knights on horseback who hold lances, was popular in Europe around 1400. When the early French sought a name for this sporting event, they noted how the knights mounted their horses and rode toward each other with their lances extended, each with the goal of knocking his opponent from his horse. The French verb torneier, meaning “to turn,” seemed the perfect base word, since knights often rode away from each other at first and then turned and charged. From torneier, the noun torneiement, was formed, the root of “tournament.”

Umpire

Sometime during the Middle Ages, the English began using the word noumper, meaning “an individual who did not belong to any team in a sporting event.” Noumper was actually a combination of the Latin adverb non, meaning “not,” and the Latin adjective par, meaning “equal.” Through the years, noumper was incorrectly pronounced and became “umpire.”