real tennis
1
9.9
- noun
:
tenis real
- Real tennis is played indoors on a court with walls, making it different from modern tennis.
Examples
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Only a handful of clubs around the world feature real tennis courts for enthusiasts of the sport.
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There are only two real tennis courts in the United States, so few people have ever heard of them, let alone seen them played.
Academic text (2000) -
During my visit to England, I experienced a match of real tennis for the first time in an ancient court.
Synonyms
An old indoor form of tennis played on a court with four walls
An old indoor game like tennis that uses a court with four walls
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'real tennis' is compositionally interpretable as 'genuine/original tennis', so a B1 learner who knows 'real' and 'tennis' will likely infer that it denotes an authentic or original form of the sport. However, the expression refers to a specific historical indoor game with distinctive rules and walls — details not predictable from the constituents — so the transparency is only partial.
Etymology
Real tennis is the name for the older, original game of tennis. Long ago kings played it indoors on special courts with walls, so people called it real to mean 'true' or 'original' tennis. That's why real tennis now means the old indoor form of the sport, different from modern tennis.