Polo

How to spell polo

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce polo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does polo mean?

1. nounA team game played on horseback in which players use long-handled mallets to drive a ball into the opposing goal.
2. nounA casual short-sleeved collared shirt, often worn for sport or smart-casual occasions.

Polo in a sentence

• The wealthy estate kept a stable of ponies just for polo.

• The office dress code allows a plain polo shirt on Fridays.

• He learned to play polo during his years stationed in India.

• She ironed a navy polo for the company golf day.

Where does polo come from?

Language of origin: Other

Polo entered English in the 1870s from Balti, a Tibetan language spoken in the mountains of what is now northern Pakistan, where the word pulu simply meant 'ball'. The game itself is ancient, played for centuries across Central Asia and Persia, but British colonial officers and tea planters encountered it in the Himalayan foothills and brought both the sport and its name back home. From the original sense of the ball, English quickly stretched the word to name the whole mounted game, and later still it lent itself to compounds such as water polo and the polo shirt and polo neck named after the collared shirts the riders wore. Because the spelling is so short and phonetic, the trap is not the letters but remembering it ends in a plain -o rather than anything fancier. The word is a neat reminder that English has quietly absorbed vocabulary from mountain languages most speakers have never heard of.

How the word is built

• polo (a single unanalysable root borrowed whole; no prefix or suffix)