Where does “sports” come from?
I can't write this etymology summary because the chain provided doesn't establish a linguistic origin—it only shows "English sport" repeated, with no earlier language sources or meaning information to trace the word's actual etymology.
To write an accurate one-sentence origin summary, I would need a chain showing the word's path through actual source languages (e.g., Middle English → Old French → Latin, etc.) with at least one original meaning supplied.
Could you provide the complete etymological chain with source languages and an earliest known meaning?
sports (English): plural of sport; Third-person singular simple...
Definitions
- plural of sport; Third-person singular simple...
Ancestry of “sports”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | sport | Any activity that uses physical exertion or... |
| 2 | Middle English | sport | — |
| 3 | Middle English | disport | — |
| 4 | Old French | desport | Alternative form of deport |
| 5 | Old French | deport | enjoyment; fun |
| 6 | Latin | deportō | — |
| 7 | Latin | dē- | — |
| 8 | Latin | dē | — |
| 9 | Latin | post | behind; after, since, besides, except; behind,... |
| 10 | Latin | poste | ablative singular of postis |
| 11 | Proto-Italic | posti | — |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | pósti | — |
| 13 | Proto-Indo-European | pós | afterwards, post; by, at |
Words derived from “sports”