royal tennis
- noun
- Archaic
:
tenis real
- Royal tennis is played in a unique court that consists of four enclosed walls.
Examples
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I learned that royal tennis has rules that are quite different from those of modern lawn tennis.
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During the festival, we watched a thrilling match of royal tennis between skilled players.
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It resembles royal tennis as it was played in the days of Suleiman the Magnificent.
Fiction book (1994)
Synonyms
1
9.9
An old indoor game like tennis played on a special court with walls
An old indoor form of tennis played on a court with four walls
Surface Forms
Morphology
A B1 learner who knows 'royal' and 'tennis' can infer that this refers to a type or variant of tennis associated with royalty or formality, so part of the meaning (a kind of tennis) is transparent. However, the specific historical sense — an older, four-walled precursor with distinct rules — is not predictable from the constituents alone, so full comprehension would require prior exposure or explanation.
Etymology
Royal tennis comes from an old indoor ball game once played by royal people like kings and nobles in small courts where players hit the ball off the walls, not across a grass court, so the word tennis shows it was a ball game. That's why royal tennis means the ancient four-walled game that became the ancestor of 'lawn tennis'.