Dear Speech Repository Community,
The 135th edition of the world’s oldest tennis tournament is over, and we hope that the tennis fans among us enjoyed every moment of this unique sporting event!
Wimbledon, and tennis in general, is often associated with a number of special traditions, reminiscent of a time in the past which is somehow still present. To name but a few: the scoring system based on quarters of an hour (15, 30… and then 40 – oops, another peculiarity it’s worth looking up) or, if you’re a spectator on the stands, with your head sweeping between left and right, then there’s eating the traditional strawberries and cream. (For the record, it is estimated that around 30,000 kilos of strawberries and 10,000 litres of cream are consumed at Wimbledon each year.) Among the many interesting curiosities linked to the tournament we, as language lovers, can’t resist the particular jargon of the sport, in which English, French and everyday life mix and mingle to create funny technical terms. Here’s just a few of them:
Love: meaning nil or zero. Although there are at least three different reasons behind its use, the most common one is that its pronunciation is close to the French “l’oeuf” (the egg, resembling a zero).
Seeds: basically, the best players in a tournament. Before the event starts, the top-ranked players are “seeded” so they don’t play against each other in the initial stages (just like the way seeds are sown in a pot: the smaller ones towards the front so the larger ones can grow more easily).
Deuce: from the French “deux de jeux”, a couple of centuries ago it also meant “bad luck” or “the devil”. It refers to when a game is tied 40-40 and two clear points are needed to win it.
So, if the adrenaline coming from Wimbledon’s grass courts makes you feel like tackling some challenging speeches, why not check out at the sports section of our Speech Repository?
We hope you will ace it!