I was listening to some commentary about the grunting sounds emanating from professional tennis players as they whack away at the ball.

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Some players are said to be emitting sounds that peak around 100 decibels and are compared to the volume of a lion’s roar—though of shorter duration and with less teeth showing.

Some say that these loud noises are a form of intimidation.

In this I see an etymological connection.  But then I see an etymological connection in practically anything.

The name of the game is tennis and it’s been around for a while.  The earliest reference we have for tennis is from Italian from 1325. Supposedly some French knights were hanging out in Florence and introduced the game there.

It was 1400 before the word turned up in English and that happened in a poem by a fellow named John Gower who not only lived at the same time as Geoffrey Chaucer, but was actually buddies with him.

Just like soccer and rugby and American football are offshoots of an earlier form of one sport, tennis also diverged in several directions.

It’s thought that tennis originally didn’t use racquets but was more like handball and in some cases was named for the French word for “hand.”

Over time different forms of tennis were called real tennis, lawn tennis and field tennis.

Real tennis was and still is played in an enclosed court with walls, some of which it is legitimate to ricochet your shot off of.

Until 1800 field tennis was still played with the open hand instead of a racquet.

The game we usually recognize as tennis, and from which all those loud grunts are emanating was until 1877 known as lawn tennis.

If the grunting players are indeed trying to intimidate their opponents with these noises it’s a little like shouting “take that” as they wallop the ball.  Tennis is called tennis because its early players did shout something like “take that.”

It is thought that the word tennis comes from the French word tenir meaning “to hold” or “to take.”

Some tennis players may be harder to intimidate than others though; Serena Williams is quoted as saying “ If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that’s concentration. I didn’t grow up playing at the country club.”