Lacrosse
nounA team sport in which players use a long-handled netted stick to catch, carry, and throw a small ball into the opposing goal.
How to spell lacrosse
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce lacrosse
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does lacrosse mean?
- nounA team sport in which players use a long-handled netted stick to catch, carry, and throw a small ball into the opposing goal.
Lacrosse in a sentence
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The university offers scholarships for talented lacrosse players.
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She bought a new netted stick before the lacrosse season started.
Where does lacrosse come from?
Language of origin: French
Lacrosse comes from the Canadian French phrase la crosse, meaning literally 'the stick', where crosse named a hooked or curved staff much like a bishop's crozier. French settlers and missionaries in what is now Canada applied the term in the 1600s and 1700s to the fast stick-and-ball game they watched Indigenous peoples of the northeast play, because the netted stick reminded them of a crosse. The word crosse itself traces back through Old French to a root meaning 'crook' or 'curved staff', the same family that gives English 'crook' and the ecclesiastical 'crozier'. By the 1800s the two French words had fused into the single English noun lacrosse, which is why the article 'la' is now silently buried inside the spelling. That hidden 'la' beginning, plus the double 's', is exactly what trips writers, since nothing in the modern sound signals a separate French word at the front.
How the word is built
- la- (French definite article: the)
- crosse (a hooked or curved stick)
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