battledore and shuttlecock
- noun
- Archaic
:
paleta y volante
- Children played battledore and shuttlecock in the garden before dinner.
Examples
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Before badminton became popular, people enjoyed battledore and shuttlecock as a pastime.
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The museum displayed an old battledore and shuttlecock set from the 18th century.
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They played battledore and shuttlecock in the park.
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Have you ever tried battledore and shuttlecock?
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Before badminton became popular, people enjoyed battledore and shuttlecock as a pastime.
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Children played battledore and shuttlecock in the garden before dinner.
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On sunny afternoons, they often gathered to play battledore and shuttlecock at the park.
Synonyms
An old game like badminton that uses a shuttlecock
Surface Forms
Morphology
battledore + and + shuttlecock
The phrase is directly compositional: it names the two objects involved, so a learner who knows 'battledore' (a small racket) and 'shuttlecock' can infer this refers to a game using those items to keep the shuttlecock in the air. This literal naming pattern is cross-linguistically common for traditional games, making the meaning accessible to a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
The game battledore and shuttlecock comes from a simple old pastime. Players used a small wooden paddle, the battledore, to hit a feathered shuttlecock and keep it in the air, so the name refers to that old game which later became the sport we now call badminton.
