Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Tennis

Ten′nis (tĕn′nĭs), n. [OE. tennes, tenies, tenyse; of uncertain origin, perhaps fr. F. tenez hold or take it, fr. tenir to hold (see Tenable).] A play in which a ball is driven to and fro, or kept in motion by striking it with a racket or with the open hand. Shak.

His easy bow, his good stories, his style of dancing and playing tennis, . . . were familiar to all London. Macaulay.

Court tennis, the old game of tennis as played within walled courts of peculiar construction; — distinguished from lawn tennis. — Lawn tennis. See under Lawn, n. — Tennis court, a place or court for playing the game of tennis. Shak.

Ten′nis, v. t. To drive backward and forward, as a ball in playing tennis. [R.] Spenser.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.