Etymologically
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Sport

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Pronunciation

  • /ʃpɔrt/, [ʃpɔʁt], [ʃpɔɐ̯t][1]

Forms

Sport m (genitive Sports or Sportes, plural (rare) Sporte)[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from English sport (“amusement, pastime, outdoor recreation”), borrowed in the first half of the 19th century.[2][3][4] The English word is a shortening of Middle English disport (“diversion, amusement”),[2][3] from Old French desport, a noun from the verb desporter (“to divert, amuse oneself”);[3][4] Kluge names the Middle French verb desporter.[2] The French verb arose by a change of prefix from deporter (“to behave, amuse oneself”),[3] from Latin dēportō (“to carry away”), which in Late and Vulgar Latin also meant “to divert, amuse”, properly “to carry one's attention away”.[3][5][6] The Latin verb is formed from portō (“to carry”).[2] The same word was taken into Dutch sport, French sport, Swedish sport and Icelandic sport.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch and Paul date the first record to 1828, when Pückler wrote from England that boxing, horse races, duck shooting, fox hunting and cockfights were all sport, and that Sportsman could not be translated, any more than Gentleman.[4][7] At first it was used mostly of English customs, often in the compound Sportsman or the English plural sports.[4]

Semantic evolution

The Grimms' dictionary says that the thing itself, in imitation of English custom, appears with its name in the 1850s, but became widespread only in the last decades of the 19th century.[8] Duden dates the use of Sport as the general term for all organised physical training and competition to the 1920s.[5] From the late 19th century the word was also applied to any activity pursued playfully but keenly, as when philology was called a mental sport in 1881; from this comes sich einen Sport daraus machen, to make a habit of doing something, often out of mischief.[7][9] The adjective sportlich is recorded from 1889 and Sportler from the first half of the 20th century.[7][3] German passed the word on to Hungarian (1843) and to Slovak, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian as šport.[10][1]

Timeline

  • 1828 – Pückler writes that all such amusements are sport.[4][7]
  • 1843 – Hungarian sport is recorded.[10]
  • 1855 – The compound Sportneuigkeit “sports news” is recorded.[8]
  • 1881 – Philology is called a kind of mental sport.[7]
  • 1889 – The adjective sportlich is recorded.[7]
  • 1920s – Duden dates the general sense “organised sport”.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. sport, physical activity done according to rules, often competitively, for enjoyment and fitness: Sie treibt dreimal in der Woche Sport.[9][1]
  2. Physical education as a school subject or field of study: Am Freitag haben wir zwei Stunden Sport.[9][1]
  3. Sport as a whole, sporting events: Er interessiert sich vor allem für Sport.[9]
  4. A particular kind of sport: Rudern ist ein anstrengender Sport.[9][1]
  5. A hobby or pastime: Segeln ist ein kostspieliger Sport.[9]

Word family

  • sportlich
  • Sportler
  • Sportsmann
  • Sportwagen
  • Denksport
  • Wintersport
  • transportieren
  • deportieren
  • English sport

Usage notes

Sich einen Sport daraus machen, etwas zu tun (colloquial) is to do something repeatedly out of high spirits or a certain malice.[9][7] Der weiße Sport is tennis.[9] The plural Sporte is rare.[9][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 870
  3. ^ a b c d e f Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  4. ^ a b c d e Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
  5. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 805
  6. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  8. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 16, 2688
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  10. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de