Sports
nounAthletic or competitive physical activities, considered as a group.
How to spell sports
6 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce sports
What does sports mean?
- nounAthletic or competitive physical activities, considered as a group.
- verbWears or displays something openly and with evident pride.
Sports in a sentence
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noun
The school offers a wide range of sports after lessons.
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verb
He proudly sports a new watch at every meeting.
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noun
Team sports such as football and hockey build cooperation.
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verb
The old car still sports its original paintwork.
Where does sports come from?
Language of origin: French
The word traces back to the Old French desport, meaning 'pastime' or 'amusement', which came from the verb desporter, literally 'to carry away' from one's work or worries, built from the Latin dis- 'away' and portare 'to carry'. English borrowed it in the medieval period as 'disport', a leisure pursuit, and over time the unstressed first syllable simply dropped away, leaving the shorter 'sport'. By the 1500s the word had narrowed toward games and athletic competition, the dominant modern sense. The plural and third-person form 'sports' has been current ever since, and the same portare root that means 'to carry' still hides inside relatives like 'transport', 'porter', and 'export'. The spelling is regular and rarely causes trouble once you remember the silent flow of the -orts ending.
How the word is built
- sport (from Old French desport: pastime, amusement)
- -s (plural/third-person marker)
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