Sporting language

SHANTHI SIVARAMAN

While the terminology used in popular games like cricket isknown to most people, those used in less familiar sports appear only in the form of questions in general knowledge contests. However, there are many sports which have become almost extinct and some which are restricted to few countries . Fox hunting and hound racing in England and bull fighting in Spain belong to this category. All the same, many terms we use in every day language trace their origin to such sports. For example, the word 'reclaim' has its origin in the sport called 'hawking', where trained hawks are used to hunt other smaller birds. The word originally meant 'to cry out against' or 'contradict'. In hawking, it acquired the meaning of calling a hawk back to the fist. Gradually the word acquired the meaning of 'reclaiming' a person from a wrong course of action as the church was interested in bringing erring individuals back to the fold. Today the word is used in larger contexts such as reclaiming land, territory, etc.

The word 'rebate', used so extensively by commercial establishments that it threatens to become part of many an Indian language, today has the meaning of a concession or discount on the price of a commodity. Originally however, it meant 'to bring back' to the fist a 'baiting hawk'.

'Allure' was an apparatus for recalling hawks and 'rouse' was earlier used to describe a hawk shaking its feathers. 'Haggard' was used to indicate a wild hawk.

The verb 'muse' which means 'to be thoughtful', seems to have originated from the word 'muzzle'. The latter term was originally used to describe the action of a dog holding up its nose or muzzle to sniff the air to pick up a scent. 'Scent' itself is a hawking term.

'Retrieve' and 'abet' are terms from falconry, the latter term having its origin in the Norse 'beita' meaning 'to cause a bite'. Jawaharlal Nehru's 'a tryst with destiny' would have sounded inappropriate with tryst's original meaning which was 'to bait or hound dogs on their prey'.

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