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An Unusual Dictionary

 

ALL you ever wanted to KNOW about TENNIS and other BALL GAMES but didn’t know where to look

 

by

 

Gil Kressmann

Foreword by Denis Grozdanovitch

 

 

 

Note: The Dedanists are very grateful for the opportunity to present extracts translated from Gil Kressmann’s perceptive and wide-ranging dictionary of tennis terms. The book, in its original French, is available from:

Editions Artena

12 rue Feutrier

75018 Paris

+33 (0)6 72 77 51 78 • artena@wanadoo.fr

 

 

 

Translator’s Preface

 

The word paume means palm in English, but in the context of European ball games it is perhaps best understood as the ancestral founder of a dynasty of games – jeux de paume –which are predominantly but not exclusively French, but all of which are descended from the act of striking a ball with the palm of a hand.

 

In fact the word paume never made it into English in quite the same way as that other French word, uttered by the server to alert the receiver that the ball was on its way, tenez, or tennis. Indeed in the case of the only game which would have been very appropriately described by the word palm, the English revealed a preference for fives.

 

So, other than defining their meaning in English where it’s essential to do so, I’ve tried to avoid literal translation of paume and its cognates jeu de paume, longue paume and courte paume, each of which I feel deserves the dignity of its original name.

 

Set out below are translations of those parts of Gil Kressmann’s dictionary that will appeal particularly to players of real tennis. I’ve started with historical and etymological entries and will eventually, I hope, work through to matters of practical and technical interest.

 

It’s a great pleasure to work with Gil Kressmann’s lively and elegant text. Each of the entries is intended to be read on its own, so there is inevitably some repetition. Any mistakes and infelicities in their translation, though, are mine.

 

Martin Village

London • 2019

 

 

1. Tenez - Tennis

Or Tenetz in Old French. This very ancient word was used by the server to announce to his opponent that the game was about to start, and to assure himself that the receiver was ready for the service. It is ultimately an expression of traditional French politeness. The spellings vary: tenetz, tenez, teneys, tenyse, tennys, but all derive from the French command ‘tenez, messire’ (hold, sir)  and convey the sense of advice to take care or get ready . In the past, the server used the word to alert his opponent before the first ball of the game.

 

Tenez is the French word that was taken up and anglicised by the English as tennis. And the French use of the term has itself evolved. Nowadays, instead of saying tenez we say ‘Etes-vous prêt? (Are you ready?) or simply ‘Prêt?’ or we just say, in English, ‘Ready?’

 

2. Main (Hand)

Around the 13th century when it began, jeu de paume was played as in all the ball games of antiquity with bare hands, using the palm of the hand to hit the ball. Then, to provide protection for the hand, it was played with a glove, and eventually a racquet was used, which lengthened the reach of the arm and, providing more leverage, allowed the ball to be hit with much greater force. Some games of pelota are still played with bare hands, or with a glove: pasaka (in Navarra and Iparrelde in Northern Spain), and balle pelote (in Belgium).

 

[Translator’s Note: it has been suggested that pelota (Spanish), pilota (Basque) and pelote (French) are all diminutives of the Latin word pila – a hard leather ball filled with pilus (fur or hair); or, possibly, from the Latin verb pellere (to hurl or propel).

 

 

3. The expression ‘Jeu de main, jeu de vilain’ (‘It’s a rough game’ or ‘Play tough’)

The people of the land, the peasants who made up the large majority of the population at the time of the Renaissance, were known as vilains (villeins or villagers) because they lived in country villas. A vilain is, in feudal language, a common-born person of the country, and the word has come to be associated with such qualities as irritating, nasty, dirty and badly brought up. If they wanted to play paume, and not having sufficient money to buy a bat (for longue paume) or a racquet (for courte paume), they had to content themselves with playing the game with bare hands, or with a glove. It is from this that the popular expression ‘jeu de main, jeu de vilain’ has evolved.

 

There’s a possible alternative explanation: longue paume was played in the countryside and therefore by villagers, while courte paume was played in  town. The racquet was introduced for courte paume at the end of the 15th century, well before it was used in longue paume. So country vilains went on playing by hand while their bourgeois counterparts played courte paume with a racquet.

 

Today, on a lawn tennis court, as well as a real tennis court, a new habit has made its appearance among doubles players. They high five each other after every point won. Is this intended to give the lie to the very ancient expression ‘jeu de main, jeu de vilain’ ?

 

Figuratively, the expression ‘jeu de main, jeu de vilain’ conveys the sense that ‘jeux de main games in which shots are traded in a bantering way, without any intention of doing each other harm, don’t suit badly brought up people, and often end in quarrels. The expression is often used to explain to children that fighting is very naughty’. Emil Littré – Dictionnaire de la langue française.

 

If you have something to prove or a score to settle, try to avoid doing it on a tennis court, real or lawn. In 2010 Thierry Henry gave a personal interpretation of this old French expression with a hand-ball goal, a goal celebrated from that time onwards, in a world cup qualifying football match against Ireland.

 

The word vilain having acquired a moral sense, the proverb has expanded its area of application and now has erotic connotations. Le Robert des Sports - Paul Robert 1990

 

 

4. Jeu de Paume

Describes the place where longue paume or courte paume is played, as well as the sport itself. When jeu de paume is mentioned without specifying which type, it’s generally courte paume that’s being talked about. It is about courte paume that the writer Pierre Assouline wrote this glowing eulogy:

 

‘Depending on temperament, jeu de paume is a way of life, a civilisation, a pastime, a skill, a recreation, a hobby, an act of asceticism, a way of carrying on, a snobbish thing, a pleasure, another way of devotion to billiards, a vision of the world, chess in action, a question of life or death… Even for those to whom it’s a sport, it’s also – that ultimate extravagance – a game! These are the ones who’ve got it the worst. It is true that you can spend a life in search of the perfect shot’. ( Assouline - La Règle du Jeu - 2004).

 

5. Longue Paume

Longue paume is played outdoors in the open air, often on ground of hardened earth or cemented surfaces. The French have played it since the 13th century. It’s the ancestor of courte paume which, by contrast, is played indoors, within four walls. Longue paume was played in castle moats, around churches and in fields. With the development of courts of courte paume in towns, longue paume became an essentially rural sport. After the Second World War the practice of the game was progressively restricted to Picardy, in a zone running from Peronne to Montdidier in the Somme, and from Breteil to Noyon in the Oise. It’s worth noting that longue paume has been played in Paris since 1855, thanks to an authorisation of the Senate, in the Jardin de Luxembourg. Today in France there are around 1,200 licensed players of longue paume and 35 sports clubs where the game can be played.

 

This game consists in sending and receiving a ball from one half of the field of play to the other with a racquet, either by  volley or after it has bounced once on the ground. A cord, a ditch or a narrow zone (depending on the type of game) separates the two camps: the Tir side, so named because it is the side from which the server (tireur) serves (tire) the service, and the Rachas (or Rechas) side which receives the service. Rachas is from an old Picardien dialect verb ‘rachasser’ or ‘rechasser’ which means to push or send back (the ball). It is still used in Belgian balle pelote.

 

The aim of longue paume is, as in all racquet sports, to force  the opposition to fail to return the ball or make a fault in doing so. To this end it’s about making the ball ‘die’ on the opposite side. The ball which bounces twice and at least once inside the limits of the area of play, without having been touched by the opposition, is said to be dead. It cannot be returned, or ‘rechassée’, as they used to say.

 

If the ball isn’t played before the second bounce, it doesn’t, for all that, lose the point but, as in courte paume, it makes a chase (chasse). Equally a ball is considered dead if, after a first bounce, it continues to roll and finishes its course within the limits of the field of play. It must then be stopped (cut or blocked) by a player as quickly as possible, so that any chase it creates is the shortest possible.

[Translator’s Note: in this sense the shorter the chase the further away from the back service line it would be]

 

The chase will determine the size of the area that remains available to the opponent(s) when they change sides. When there are two chases the players must change sides and the service (the tir in longue paume) changes hands. The players must then play these chases and win them to get a point.

 

Games can be played between 2 and 12 players on a field of play divided into two camps and separated by a cord or a ditch. There are two types of game in longue paume: the grounded game (la partie terrée) and the raised game (la partie enlevée):

 

• the grounded game, the most ancient, is played with a cord laid on the ground in the middle of the field of play. It takes its name - grounded - from the fact that once the ball is in play it can be returned along the ground without the need to get over the cord in each exchange – because the receiving players can go into the opposition side to hit the ball back. The grounded game is played with four or six on each side, with seven winning games (jeux gagnants) to the set.

 

• in the raised game, in every exchange the ball must get over the ditch or neutral ground (fossé or terrain neutre) and there is no right of rolling the ball along the ground (balle terrée) to create a longer chase. The raised game can be played as singles, doubles or four against four, with 5 winning games to the set.

 

[Translator’s Notes:

• During the 2nd Olympiad in Paris in 1900, a longue paume tournament took place in the Jardin de Luxembourg, featuring both types of game (terrée and enlevée), and played entirely by French teams (which, presumably, won all the medals).

 

• The Fédération Française de Longue Paume has a face-book page, and a headquarters at 23 chemin du Thil, 80000 Amiens.

 

• All games involving chases are known as games of gagne-terrain (gain-ground), but only in longue paume is it not desirable only to make the opponent unable to return the ball, it’s also necessary for that to happen as far away as possible. No other modern game incorporates this principle, and it’s possibly why, in the grounded game (la partie terrée), there is theoretically no limit to the length of the rachas (receivers’ end).]

 

(sketch of longue paume court to follow)

 

 

6. Courte Paume – Real Tennis

Emerging directly from the game of longue paume, it was probably first played in the 13th century and underwent  strong development in towns from the beginning of the 15th century with the growth of the merchant classes and the nobility.

 

Courte paume began because players in towns retreated to rooms. Courte paume (short palm) is so called because by comparison to those of a longue paume (long palm) ground, its dimensions are smaller, being around half the length. The cost of real estate in towns effectively forced courte paume to adapt its playing space. The courts of courte paume were quickly covered with a roof to permit play in all weather.

 

Grounds on the margins of cities, if not outside them altogether, continued to be used for the outdoor practice of the original form of the game, which was known thereafter as longue paume .

 

While longue paume essentially confined itself to northern France, courte paume spread progressively throughout Europe during the course of the 17th century. There are the remains of numerous jeux de courte paume in Austria, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the Low Countries. In Germany courte paume took the name Ballhaus.

 

Thus courte paume became Europe’s first mass sport. Not until the 19th century was it also played in the US and Australia.

 

At the time of its peak, in the 15th, 16th and at the start of the 17th centuries, jeu de courte paume had become incontestably the favourite pastime not only of the nobility, but also of students, merchants and artisans in towns. Men of the church and monks also played this game, while longue paume was the outdoor sport for country people – the vilains.

 

Albert de Luze, the great historian of jeu de paume, made a list of some 300 jeux de courte paume in different provinces of the kingdom at the beginning of the 17th century. Several accounts mention a number of 250 jeux de courte paume in Paris alone at the end of the 17th century, at a time when the capital numbered no more than 300,000 inhabitants.

 

At that time there were two sorts of jeux de courte paume, one which was called jeu à carré, the older form of the game that has now disappeared, and the other, the jeu à dedans, a game in which there is a large opening on the back wall on the side of the server, a bay called ‘dedans’. This is the game that is played now in France, England, the United States and Australia.

 

There are presently ten or so jeux de courte paume in France of which only four are being actively used: Bordeaux, Fontainebleau, Paris and Pau. Other courts that are still recognisable have been for the most part turned into museums. This has happened to the Jeu de Paume des Tuileries in Paris, the celebrated Jeu de Paume de Versailles which has become the museum of the French Revolution,  and to the Jeu de Paume de Chantilly.

 

A discovery has been made very recently at La Bastide-Clairence in the Pyrenees of a jeu de paume dating from 1512 - it is in the process of renovation – and another at Chinon (end of 16th century) which had been used for poultry processing but could be converted back to its original function. Very recently, paume has been played in a trinquet at Bayonne.

 

 

 

Translator’s note: This is for starters. I’ll try to do 3 or 4 definitions a month, and get some illustrations going too.

 

Gil wrote his book back in 2012 – since then Bordeaux has gone and is coming back again.